«I am leaving the presidency of Prometeo for health reasons: I will have to undergo a kidney transplant to avoid the slavery of dialysis». The announcement comes from Pino Argiolas, who has led the transplant association since 2008: born as a small Cagliari-based organization it has expanded throughout Sardinia, assisting those who have received or are due to receive an organ, and achieving important objectives for all members .
Argiolas will no longer be able to lead. He risked his life after contracting Covid during the World Cup for transplant recipients in Australia. A stroke followed. Ailments which "have left important consequences, with atrial fibrillation to be treated and with problems in my left leg which I am recovering thanks to physiotherapy and daily walks in the Terramaini Park", explains the president. He adds: «Since I have had a single kidney since 2019 and have high creatinine, I was advised by the doctors who follow me to have a kidney transplant to avoid dialysis. Therefore, to spare myself this slavery, if it is possible and after the appropriate visits have been carried out, I will also face the kidney transplant with the same courage as always, hoping to be more at peace in the future."
For Argiolas it is an opportunity to draw up a balance sheet of his associative activity: when he took over the reins of Prometeo, the association «could count on around fifty members, almost all liver transplant recipients and relatives, on a fund of 3,000 approximately euros and on a site in the old school in via Santa Maria Goretti in Pirri".
Now «it has become a regional association with legal personality, also registered in the single national register of the Third Sector (Runts). Not only that: it has almost 600 paying members throughout Sardinia, transplanted and non-transplanted. It created a provincial coordination in Sassari to better assist transplant recipients from Northern Sardinia. It now has three corporate offices (in Selargius, Sassari and Monserrato) and three regularly hired and paid employees. Furthermore, it has become an association of all organ transplant recipients, even if, for historical reasons, our members are mainly liver transplant recipients."
Thanks to Prometeo's commitment, the protections, including economic ones, which were previously reserved only for kidney transplant recipients, have been extended to all transplant recipients. And the allowance in their favor was increased by 25%.
«With this last message as president», concludes Argiolas, «but above all as a transplant recipient, I want to thank my donor, who I don't know, her family and all the healthcare personnel who work in donation and transplants, because if I have lived through these almost 16 years after the transplant, I owe it to them. Thank you with all my heart".
(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)
