The article addresses this. The patient previously had a human kidney transplant in 2018, which failed sometime in (reading slightly between the lines) 2023, as well as having other health issues. Another human Kidney wouldn't have been made available to him for five to six years, and his doctors didn't believe that he would live that long.

I still think it counts as brave though, certainly not an easy choice.

If you actually read the article, it goes into details about why he's ineligible for a normal transplant and also why his dialysis is failing.