Kidney recipient to speak at UT

2/26/2009

A two-time kidney transplant recipient will speak tomorrow at the University of Toledo about organ donation.

Tifiro Cook, who has been featured in a National Geographic documentary about his paired donation process at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, will speak at 7 p.m. in the Ingman Room of the student union on UT's main campus.

Mr. Cook was diagnosed with renal disease and received one of his sister's kidneys in 1993, but it failed four years later because of rejection. Ten years after that failure, he received a second transplant through the paired donation process.

Paired donation allows people who want to give a kidney to a loved one but are incompatible to be matched with another incompatible donor-recipient pair, and kidneys are exchanged between them.

Mr. Cook's speech is part of the Do it Now college challenge through Donate Life Ohio and the Second Chance Trust Fund.