LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Vanessa Ulloa remembers her father, Alejandro, calling her often.
“Hi, Dad, what are you doing? Oh, I’m doing this, I’m doing that. He would call me. Oh, come after work, have lunch with us, have dinner with us. Oh, come to my house, come do this, come do that,” Ulloa said.
Ulloa says she wishes she could get one more phone call. Her father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
“We knew that if he would have had a choice, he would have said yes,” Ulloa said.
A decision that reached two continents
After he passed, his family made the decision to donate his corneas, helping improve the vision of two people.
“One is in Florida and one’s in Africa. So he’s in a whole other… I mean, the way I see it, he’s in two different countries,” Ulloa said.
According to the Nevada Donor Network, approximately 63% of people on a national transplant waiting list are from multicultural communities. Nearly 27,000 of those people on that list are Latino.
In Nevada, nearly 700 people are waiting for a life-saving transplant. Of those, 204 are Latino.
Adriana Connelly, multicultural engagement strategist at Nevada Donor Network, said shared background between donor and recipient can play a role in outcomes.
“Yes, there are probabilities of survival if the donor and the beneficiary are of different races or ethnicities, but there can be more probabilities of survival if they share their genetics,” Connelly said.
Misconceptions can complicate decisions
For some families in the Latino community, misconceptions about organ donation can make that decision even harder.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of rumors, a lot of beliefs that if you’re an organ donor, doctors won’t do everything they can in their power to save you. But I mean, I was later informed that it’s not the case. They do,” Connelly said.
Connelly said donating is an act that can give someone a second chance.
“You are doing one less selfless self-act to giving someone, to improving someone’s life, to give that person a second chance, opportunity to spend a little bit more time with their loved ones,” Connelly said.
Ulloa said her father’s decision continues to make a difference.
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