Approximately 40 picketers have gathered outside of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago as part of a hunger strike, protesting the hospital's transplant policy for undocumented immigrants, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report.
Fourteen of the picketers are in their sixth day of the hunger strike. The protesters have indicated they will not end the demonstration until Northwestern Memorial's CEO, Dean Harrison, agrees to a meeting with them.
The protesters say 14 undocumented immigrants from Mexico who live in Chicago are in need of organ transplants they cannot afford due to their lack of federal healthcare coverage.
In the report, Rush University Medical Center's CMO David Asnell, MD, pointed out that 20 percent of organs come from uninsured people, but only around 1 percent of organs go to uninsured people who need them. "These people donate the organs, but mostly don't get access to them," he said in the report.
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