In the past five years, only seven Māori patients have received a pre-emptive kidney transplant, compared to 125 non-Māori patients. Photo: 123RF
Patient advocates say racism and prejudice is leading to "woefully" low rates of kidney transplants among Māori.
The calls follows research which found Māori are 14 times less likely to get a pre-emptive kidney transplant than non-Māori, and go on to make up one-third of all patients starting treatment for kidney failure.
Renal physicians and nurses found that many Māori patients distrust health services because of the way they are treated.
Kidney Health NZ's acting general manager, Traci Stanbury, said more information around tikanga and the transplant procedure itself needed to be shared.
"That includes marae-based education; they're just not receiving that information around education around kidney disease and around transplants.
"Transplants are the gold standard for kidney failure, you will actually live a lot longer with a transplant compared to being on dialysis," said Stanbury.
She said the research, published last year in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, interviewed 40 Māori patients and their whānau during different stages of the kidney transplant process.
"Despite not being asked specifically about racism in this study, participants reported feeling disempowered and disadvantaged in a health system not designed for indigenous people, nor with easy access to culturally specific assessments, weight management criteria and support, and resources for awareness campaigns and marae-based education," Stanbury said.
"Now that we have the Māori Health Authority as well as Health New Zealand, we've got some great concepts out there.
"We just need to be actioning those. We've got a lot of suggestions that can be done but we need an authority that can actually go out there and start doing things now, we can't be waiting for another couple of years to go and action these."
In the past five years, only seven Māori patients have received a pre-emptive kidney transplant, compared to 125 non-Māori patients.
"That number is just absolutely shocking. It should be up at at least a third of ... the total of the pre-emptive transplants," said Stanbury.
Te Aka Whai Ora has been approached for comment.
