The Australian government is now operating in accordance with the Guidance on Caretaker Conventions, pending the outcome of the 2025 federal election.
At 38 years old, Manisha, was diagnosed with a kidney disease in which IgA, a protein meant to defend the body against foreign invaders, accumulates in the kidneys and damages them, impairing their filtering function. While Manisha was treated with medication and dialysis three times a week for four hours at a time, she would eventually need a transplant.
Manisha and her husband started investigating the Paired Kidney Exchange, in the hope that he could become a living donor. However, a different kidney condition prevented him from becoming a living donor.
Not long before Manisha was to be placed on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, she was producing a dance show with her partner at the Bollywood Dance School. It was here she became friends with an Indian couple, one of whom generously offered to become her living kidney donor.
Organs from donors of the same ethnic background are more likely to be a close match to patients in need of transplants.
"I'm indebted to him for life,” she said of her donor friend. “I was blessed to have had a godsent person in my life to do this. Not everybody has this.”
In 2012, Manisha’s kidney transplant was a success after a five-hour operation. Isolated in a hospital room due to her immuno-suppressed status, the first 90 days were the most critical. At 4 months post-transplant, she was going to the gym and at 8 months post-transplant she started running again.
Manisha wants to encourage other Indian Australians to talk about organ donation with their friends and family.
“When I die what use is my body to anyone? I’d rather donate my organs and save up to 7 lives. If you’d been in a situation where your loved one needed one, would you say no? No. You would do anything and everything to save their life.”
“Because I am a kidney recipient, I know how very important it is to pledge your organs. Once you leave the body, your organs are of no use to you anymore. As I see it, they will either go to ash, or go underground - so why not bestow them to a noble cause and save lives?”
