An agonizing wait for many

SELENA GOMEZ’S surprise kidney transplant drew attention Thursday to the donation process. The singer, 25, who suffers from the autoimmune disorder lupus, received a kidney from actress Francia Raisa, 29. She disclosed the news Thursday in an Instagram post and called Raisa’s donation “the ultimate gift and sacrifice.” There are 123,000 people in the U.S. on the waiting list for a kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation. Statistics show only about 17,000 people a year receive a kidney, and 12 people on the list die each day. The transplant list, managed by the United Network for Organ Sharing, is ordered by severity of need. “This number (of kidney recipients) is so low because that’s how many kidneys are available from people who have died,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Health, told the Daily News. A person on the list can wait three to five years for a matching kidney. In some parts of the country, that wait is much longer. Donors can be living or deceased. For Gomez, having a direct donor — not her celebrity status — sped up the process.