A research team led by the University of Cincinnati revealed that patients in need of kidney can opt for transplantation by safely receiving a kidney from an HCV-infected donor. This report was published online in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Dr. Mark Eckman, the director of general internal medicine from the University of Cincinnati said, "Increasing the supply decreases the time patients on dialysis wait for a transplant; The key is to treat the disease after transplantation.”

Dr. Eckman further added, “Curing hepatitis C, a serious liver disease, is easier and less toxic than it was only a few years ago. New drugs have few side effects and cure rates are nearly 100 percent.”

"The quality of the organs, except for HCV infection, is quite high; What's been frustrating, and a shame, is that the bulk of these organs have been discarded."

In the United States, it was reported that among the half million patients who had dialysis due to late-stage kidney disease in 2016, only 19,000 received kidney transplants successfully due to organ shortages.

One has to wait for more than two years to receive a non-infected kidney. Just eight months are enough to receive a kidney from HCV patients, which is actually more cost effective with increased survival chance and is a viable alternative.