Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, how one American search for a new kidney revealed a racial bias in the U.S. healthcare system.

A letter from her hospital came in the mail last year, explaining she should have been

added to the transplant list four years earlier and that a racially biased test was to blame.

How many lives has this hidden bias already taken? And how many are still at risk?

I'm Malika Bilal, and this is the take.

I was a senior in high school, and my school basically had this policy where every person that was a part of a sports team or

trying out for a sports team needed to get a physical. So I went to my primary and she did a number

of tests including a urine analysis, which basically she saw that I had protein in my urine,

which is a silent symptom for kidney disease. That's Jasmine Evans. Now, she's a PhD

student of Africology at Temple University. And she knows quite a bit about kidney disease,

maybe more than she would like. I am also a kidney health and racial equity advocate within the health care system.

But back in 2012, when all she wanted was to play sports, she ended up with a hard lesson in kidney health.

Honestly, as a 17-year-old, I knew that something was wrong with my kidneys, but I didn't really understand like the magnitude

of what that meant, basically saying that, you know, one day you're going to go into kidney

failure. Jasmine, do you remember the day that your doctors first brought up your kidneys?

Yes, absolutely. So for me, it was really hard to reconcile that at such a young age.

Because, I mean, at that point, you're thinking about, well, how long do I have?

Is this terminal?

Like, what's going on?

But I'm really grateful by the fast action of my doctors because they were able to catch it

relatively early and we were able to

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