Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease, where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function, the end result of which is kidney failure.
My friend was on dialysis for six years before he got a new kidney. I was on dialysis for eight months. I'm almost not even the typical person who has kidney failure.
It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.
I was pretty bad. When I first was diagnosed with kidney failure, my function - the function of my kidney was less than 8 percent.
Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status.
I had worked on dogs for a couple of years developing a renal transplant operation. We had dogs running around with kidneys we had transplanted back into themselves.
We are born with two kidneys and only need one to survive. Maybe God gave us the other one so that we could give it away.
Don't forget my new kidney is a foreign object. My body attacks it. So I have to take these anti-rejection drugs to stop my body winning.
Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife.
I'd like people to know that you can head off kidney disease, maybe prevent a transplant or stop the disease from progressing after detection by doing a simple urine test in the doctor's office.
I've still got both kidneys, but one doesn't work, so I have to be careful not to drink too much, even water, and I have to keep myself as healthy as possible.
It's remarkable what a new kidney does to your life. I have no complaints... I'm pretty amazed. I have been working on my stamina.
The dialysis is to wash my blood, to keep my kidneys functioning.
I'm a prime example of the way kidney disease strikes silently.
Kidney donors don't have to be close relatives of recipients, but they do need to have the right blood type. And kidneys from living donors tend to last many years longer than kidneys from deceased donors.
A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.
I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.
You can put a kidney in your body - and somewhere down the line, your body might reject it.
I was in the hospital for about two weeks because I had some complications due to the transition to kidney from dialysis and getting off of that.
Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there's not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery.
Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.
Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.
I moved to Harvard in 1998, and in 2000 the first kidney exchange in the United States was done at a hospital nearby. I started to think, 'Gee, there might be a way where I could help organize it, make it easier for people to find kidneys.'
A lot of people want to donate a kidney, but they're not in a position to because they have health issues of their own, and a lot of people need them. That's why the list is long and it takes a long time.
I had been living with dialysis for three years or so, and the new kidney felt like a reprieve, a new gift of life. I felt alive again and I guess that has had an effect on my use of colour.
