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For Sugar Land resident Tom O’Driscoll, March 9 is a day he hopes to achieve what some 14,000 people have done: Reach the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Houston NBC affiliate KPRC reported that O’Driscoll is making his way toward the peak of Africa’s highest mountain to help raise awareness for organ donation.
O’Driscoll’s target date so happens to be World Kidney Day; he donated his kidney more than a decade ago as well as a part of his liver, the station reported.
According to the report, O’Driscoll; however, isn’t alone in his challenging endeavor as he’s joined by other living donors from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that oversees the only Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network in the country.
He ran, biked and swam to help build his endurance, KPRC reported.
A news report on the radio inspired O’Driscoll to become an organ donor in 2010, and he hopes his trek up the nearly 20,000-foot high Kilimanjaro will do the same.
“[It] was a pebble in the river, and the ripples went out, and it touched me, it really touched me deeply, and I hope that our climb will be the same,” he told KPRC. “Another pebble in the pond that the ripple will go out and touch somebody else.”
Located in Tanzania, Kilimanjaro is a snow-capped volcano that bears the distinction as the world’s largest free-standing mountain rise, per National Geographic’s website.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) said on its website that more than 100,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list.
As of 2021, approximately 90,000 patients on the waiting list were so for a kidney, with around 25,000 transplants performed.
KPRC reported that the number of organ donors in 2022 was just below 43,000.
“Being an organ donor does not in any way limit your health, your well-being or your level of fitness,” O’Driscoll told the station.