(CNN) — A Kansas City-area man proposed to his girlfriend during a Royals baseball game this week, after she gave him one of her kidneys earlier this year, according to CNN affiliate KSHB.
Taesha Benson donated a kidney to Travis Spire-Sweet just before Valentine’s Day. Spire-Sweet was born with only 25% of a functioning kidney, and Benson was a perfect match, the station reported.
The chances of unrelated people being this close of a match for kidney donation is about 1 in 30,000, according to the University of Kansas, where the surgery was performed.
Every 10 minutes, someone is added to the waiting list for a donated organ, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Some receive the organ they need. But every year, thousands of people die waiting for a donor organ they never receive — about 18 per day.
Here are some other numbers regarding organ donation:
118,189: The number of people currently waiting for a donated organ as of Thursday, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
96,262: The number of people awaiting a kidney transplant as of Thursday.
2,001: The number of people under 18 on a waiting list for an organ as of last week.
8: The number of lives one organ donor can save.
4,421: The number of transplants performed in January and February 2013.
79: The average number of organ transplants daily.
65: The percentage of people on national transplant waiting list over the age of 50, as of 2012.
2.3: The percentage of deceased donors who were Asian as of 2010.
574: The number of deceased donors in 2012 who were age 65 or older.
90: The percentage of Americans who say they support donation, according to Donate Life America, a nonprofit alliance of state teams and national organizations committed to increasing organ, eye and tissue donation.
30: The percentage of Americans who know the essential steps to take to be a donor, according to Donate Life.
