People urged to register their organ donation decision
As more than 160 adults and children wait for life-saving transplant operations in Bradford, a leading doctor is urging people to register their decision to donate.
The call comes at the beginning of national Organ Donation Week (Sept 18-24) as the city’s organ donation champion, Dr James Morgan, wants people to think about giving someone the gift of life. One hundred and sixty-two patients1. are today hoping to receive the life-saving call to say a donor organ has become available.
Dr Morgan, clinical lead for organ donation and an intensive care consultant at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:
Organ donation is seen as a gift of life. One organ donor has the potential to save nine lives, which is an incredible legacy to leave.
I would urge people throughout the city and region to sit down together, learn and talk about organ donation (www.organdonation.nhs.uk) with their families and loved ones, so that your wishes are clear.
More than 170,000 people in Bradford have already made their wishes known by signing up to the Organ Donor Register (https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision/), which anyone can do in only a couple of minutes online, so please make your decision known so your family are certain of your wishes when you die.
Karen Piotr is the hospital’s organ donation committee chairperson and became involved after her husband, Mark donated his organs after his death following a catastrophic brain bleed. She is also a Donor Family Network Trustee.
Karen added:
In our Trust alone, 145 patients are currently waiting for a kidney transplant and between 2022 and 2023, four people from the district died waiting for the donor organ that never came which is a tragedy for our patients and their families.
In the same period, 64 people across the district received the gift of life while ten donations occurred due to the generosity of people who died in Bradford.
Here in Bradford we see the huge benefits that organ donation can bring so please, this organ donation week, talk to your family and leave them certain about your wishes.
Only around 1% of people who die in the UK every year are usually able to donate their organs after death. Donors are typically those who have died in a hospital intensive care unit or emergency department due to brain injuries, cardiac arrest or trauma.
Dr Morgan continued:
If you would like to help others by donating your organs after death , please prove it and register today. There are 162 people in Bradford this month in urgent need of transplants.. Think what it is like to be in their position.
I hope that this year, families and loved ones will sit down and talk about donating their organs after their death. They have life-changing and lifesaving benefits to the living.
Families are far more likely to support donation when they already know their loved one’s wishes. The overwhelming majority honour their family members decision when the donor proactively registered their wish to donate on the NHS Organ Donor Register or spoke openly with their family.
Family members are sometimes uncertain whether to proceed with their loved one’s wish to donate, and not having discussed organ donation during life is a common reason. This results in many missed opportunities to honour their wishes and save and change lives for the better. It is vital that everyone who wants to be a donor registers their decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register and talks it through with their families who will be expected to support their decision should the time come.
In the UK, someone dies every day in need of an organ and there are more than 7,000 people currently on the active transplant waiting list.
Anthony Clarkson, Director of Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation, at NHS Blood and Transplant, added:
This Organ Donation Week we’re urging everyone to confirm their support for organ donation on the NHS Organ Donor Register.
Families will still always be consulted before organ donation goes ahead and we know that 9 out of 10 families will agree to support organ donation if their loved one has confirmed their decision to donate on the register.
The more people who make their decision known on the NHS Organ Donor Register, the more families will support that decision and the more lives will be saved.
– All stats included in this press release are correct as of September 11, 2023 –