Victory! Hospital Backtracks, Adds Black Teen to Heart Transplant List

This "change of heart" is undoubtedly the work of activists in Atlanta and around the country who have bombarded the hospital with calls to save Anthony Stokes' life over the past week. Activism really can shift the tide. 

Melencia Hamilton, Stokes' mother, after hearing that the hospital reversed its decision (Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal Constitution)

by Rania Khalek, Dispatches from the Underclass

Without giving a reason,  Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta reversed its decision to deny 15-year-old Anthony Stokes a new heart.

“We met with hospital officials about 30 minutes ago,” family spokesman Mark Bell said this afternoon. “After reviewing the situation, they said Anthony would be placed on the list for a heart transplant and that he would be first in line, due to his weakened heart condition.”

Bell said hospital officials did not offer a reason as to why they changed their minds.

In a statement issued shortly after the family’s announcement, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said: “As we stated previously, a heart transplant evaluation is an ongoing process based on the patient and his or her family’s ability to meet specific transplant criteria. … Our physician experts are continuing to work with this family to establish a care plan and determine the best next steps for the patient.”

Anthony suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy. Without a new heart, doctor’s say he will die within three to six months, according to his mother. Over the weekend, the hospital notified the family that Anthony was not a good candidate for transplant due to a “history of noncompliance”, which was determined base on low school performance and a run-in with the law.

To read more about disparities in the organ transplant process, check out my post from Monday.

#CAHungerStrike: August 13

Prisoner Strike Leaders Have Not Eaten in 37 DAYS

To learn more about how to get involved in support of the California hunger strikers' 5 demands, visit the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition.

Here we are, Day 37 into the California prisoner’s hunger strike which began on July 8, 2013.  There are nearly 300 men who have been on the hunger strike since it started. During the first week of the hunger strike, 14 men who signed off on the Agreement to End Hostilities dated August 12, 2012 were placed in Administrative Segregation (Ad-Seg). This retaliation against the prisoners has further allowed CDCR to extend its power and cancel all family visits.

Although the inmates are suffering, their families too are being tormented by the CDCR and the lack of information on their loved ones’ conditions. The only information made available to families is through media reports describing the slow deterioration of the inmates. CDCR Secretary Beard stated in his Los Angeles Times Op Ed, "I am concerned about the toll this hunger strike is taking on my staff, the inmates and their families.”  He has the power to end the hunger strike, if he really cared about the inmates and their families.

Let me be clear about this peaceful protest.  These brave men are not involved in this hunger strike for personal gain or to create a lavish prison lifestyle for themselves.  Rather, they are protesting inhumane conditions and treatment in the California prison system.  These prisoners are tortured daily, mistreated and abused, by a system that is run and paid for by California tax payers.  I for one do not want my tax dollars going towards the abuse and maltreatment of another individual. We must live up to the deepest values of our nation, the United States of America, where everyone’s right to be treated fairly and as a human being are constitutionally protected.  The significance of this strike is to allow the nation to see the abuse and abhorrent conditions that exist within our prison systems.

As a wife whose husband has endured unbelievable atrocities for over twenty-eight years in solitary confinement, I am pleading with Governor Brown to intervene, end the torture, and comply with the requests set forth by these men who are starving themselves.

On behalf of the Mediation Team,
Irene Huerta, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC)

Hunger Strike Mediation Team

Dr. Ronald Ahnen, California Prison Focus and St. Mary’s College of California
Barbara Becnel, Occupy4Prisoners.org
Dolores Canales, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement
Laura Magnani, American Friends Service Committee
Marilyn McMahon, California Prison Focus
Carol Strickman, Legal Services for Prisoners With Children
Azadeh Zohrabi, Legal Services for Prisoners With Children

Black Teen Denied Heart Transplant Because of Bad Grades and Trouble with Law

This story is simply appalling. That this should happen in a hospital in the United States under a black president who campaigned on universal health care is simply unthinkable. Shame on Children's Hospital of Atlanta. Shame on the capitalist system. Shame on the United States of America. 

by Rania Khalek, Dispatches from the Underclass

Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta estimate that without a heart transplant, 15-year-old Anthony Stokes will die within three to six months from heart failure. Yet despite his prognosis, they refuse to put Anthony on the transplant list, telling his family he doesn’t qualify due to “a history of non-compliance” characterized by “low grades and trouble with the law.”

“They said they don’t have any evidence that he would take his medicine or that he would go to his follow-ups,” Melencia Hamilton, Anthony’s mother, told WSBTV. Hamilton says that a transplant is the only option for her son’s enlarged heart.

In a recently issued statement, the hospital would not reveal any specifics about how they came to their decision, saying, “The well-being of our patients is always our first priority. We are continuing to work with this family and looking at all options regarding this patient’s health care. We follow very specific criteria in determining eligibility for a transplant of any kind.” The hospital wants to send him home with medication, presumably to die.

But Anthony’s loved ones haven’t given up on him. Neither has the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which has taken up his cause.

“He’s been given a death sentence because of a broad and vague excuse of noncompliance. There was nothing specific in that decision. Just noncompliance,” Christine Young Brown of the SCLC told CBS Atlanta.

Mack Major, Anthony’s mentor, added, “We must save Anthony’s life. We don’t have a lot of time to do it, but it’s something that must be done.”

It’s no secret that children of color, particularly black children, are far more likely to be suspended and expelled for minor infractions than their white peers, pushing them out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system in a process known as the “school to prison pipeline.” With this in mind, is it fair for Anthony to be denied life-saving treatment because he is a black male and therefore the target of discriminatory discipline policies and structurally racist criminal justice system?

Little Value Placed On Black And Brown Lives 

Anthony isn’t the only person being pushed to his death by institutional racism.

Last week, 14 undocumented Mexican immigrants in desperate need of organ transplants embarked on a hunger strike outside of Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital to protest the facility’s refusal to provide organ transplants to the undocumented and uninsured.

According to the Moratorium on Deportations Campaign, “Hospitals routinely deny life-saving patient care based on immigration status and inability to pay: in a profit-driven medical system, only certain lives are deemed to be worth saving.”

But that doesn’t stop hospitals from using organs donated by the undocumented and uninsured to save the lives of more privileged Americans.

Dr. David Ansell, chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center, told the Chicago Sun-Times that, “20 percent of organs come from uninsured people, but around 1 percent of organs go to uninsured people who need them. These people donate the organs, but mostly don’t get access to them.”

As census data indicates, an overwhelming 55 percent of uninsured Americans are people of color, including 20 percent of African Americans 30 percent of Hispanics. And with that, a disturbing picture begins to emerge of a system that happily harvests the organs of poor minorities to give to the privileged while cutting off their access to life-saving treatment.

Over the years several studies have shown that lack of insurance isn’t the only factor contributing to transplant disparities. A 2012 study published in the American Journal of Transplantation by researchers at the Emory Transplant Center in Atlanta, Georgia, found significant racial disparities throughout the organ transplant process even after controlling for demographics.

“Socioeconomic factors, including health insurance and access to care, explained almost 1/3 of the lower rate of transplant among black vs. white patients,” the research reveals. “However, even after adjusting for demographic, clinical, and socioeconomic factors, blacks had a 59% lower rate of transplant than whites.”

A more recent study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine revealed similar findings that showed African Americans were 56 percent less likely to receive a kidney before dialysis than their white counterparts.

People of color are at a clear disadvantage when it comes to organ transplantation. And absent some sort of intervention, 15-year-old Anthony Stokes will die because of it.