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Friday, February 28, 2025

National Organ Transplant Unit: 1,500 sign up as kidney donors

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20161106

The num­ber of peo­ple in this coun­try who have do­nat­ed their kid­neys af­ter death is not enough to fill a big maxi.

A big maxi taxi seats 25 pas­sen­gers. On­ly 17 peo­ple in this coun­try have to date do­nat­ed their kid­neys fol­low­ing their death, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from the Na­tion­al Or­gan Trans­plant Unit (No­tu). Those 17 de­ceased donors have been able to save 29 lives.

In Au­gust, Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed em­barked on the Gift of Life cam­paign aimed at pro­mot­ing pub­lic aware­ness about or­gan do­na­tion and trans­plants and en­cour­age cit­i­zens to aug­ment this coun­try's donor pool.

This week, we speak to Dr Les­ley Ann Roberts, the head of the No­tu since its in­cep­tion in Jan­u­ary 2006.

Roberts said, to date, some 1,500 peo­ple have signed up to be­come donors in this coun­try.

The 17 de­ceased donors in this coun­try did not sign up be­fore their death.

"The way the sys­tem works is that you can sign up but you have to ob­vi­ous­ly die be­fore you can be­come a de­ceased donor and you have to die in a cer­tain way. You have to die where­by your cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tem is still go­ing, so there­fore you ba­si­cal­ly have to die in an ICU (In­ten­sive Care Unit) or in a mon­i­tored sit­u­a­tion," Roberts said. Roberts said peo­ple of­ten ques­tion why those who die at the scene of road traf­fic ac­ci­dents and mur­ders are not used as donors.

"Those are cir­cu­la­to­ry deaths and at this point in time, we are not us­ing that type of per­son," she said.

"We can move to­wards it but that has added com­pli­ca­tions, added prob­lems and the need for added re­sources."

There are cur­rent­ly 92 peo­ple on the No­tu's wait­ing list who do not have some­one to do­nate a kid­ney to them and are hop­ing to get one from a de­ceased donor.

There are hun­dreds more who have not com­plet­ed all the re­quired pa­per­work and have not been added to the list as yet. Ac­cord­ing to the No­tu, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 peo­ple are in need of kid­ney trans­plants in this coun­try and that num­ber grows by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 every year, with a "very large num­ber" of peo­ple dy­ing an­nu­al­ly while wait­ing. Roberts said one per­son has been on the No­tu's wait­ing list for some nine years.

"Es­sen­tial­ly, the big prob­lem that we have as the rest of the world has is the de­mand for or­gans is far greater than the sup­ply of or­gans, so every­thing that is re­al­ly done now is how do you in­crease your or­gan sup­ply," Roberts said.

The No­tu's first kid­ney trans­plant took place on Jan­u­ary 19, 2006.

The unit has done 159 trans­plants so far, Roberts said.

"You may say that is not very much in the ten years be­cause it is not, but giv­en our cir­cum­stances, giv­en what we have done, I think we have done a lot. I think we have shown that the pro­gramme is sus­tain­able. We have shown that the pro­gramme could be com­pared with in­ter­na­tion­al sta­tis­tics be­cause we have a one-year sur­vival rate of both liv­ing re­lat­ed, un­re­lat­ed and de­ceased of about 93 per cent," Roberts said.

Roberts said while the No­tu has made some mis­takes along the way there has been growth.

"I re­mem­ber there was some­body...their fa­ther lit­er­al­ly lift­ed them up and brought them in to see us and he gave her a kid­ney and now she is there ar­gu­ing with him, she has bought a car, she is work­ing, she has got­ten a sec­ond chance at life," Roberts said.

"We saw peo­ple who were des­per­ate, so emo­tion­al­ly sunken, now hav­ing some­thing to live for. All the sto­ries are not hap­py sto­ries but we have seen peo­ple who felt that they had noth­ing more, noth­ing to live for and hav­ing a trans­plant and be­ing back on the road.

"I think that is one of the high points in life see­ing that trans­for­ma­tion and I think that is ab­solute­ly in­cred­i­ble."

An­oth­er high­light for Roberts is when the No­tu man­aged to do 20 trans­plants in 2014.

That is the most trans­plants the unit did in a sin­gle year.

n Any­one will­ing to be­come a na­tion­al donor can call 800-3666.


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