Gift of life

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Saturday, July 07, 2007

By Lisa Haynes

After suffering six heart attacks, the life of an 18-month-old girl has been given a new ray of hope thanks to a transplant. Zoe Chambers, born with a heart valve that was too narrow, was given a life-saving donor organ

Before the transplant, baby Zoe's situation was declared "desperate" by doctors - she was given just weeks to live and placed at the top of the European heart transplant list.

Now her vital heart transplant has put her in a stable condition.

"We thank the donor family for thinking about another child during their sad time," a spokeswoman at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital said.

Zoe is one of the lucky transplant patients. More than 400 people die every year in the UK waiting for a kidney, lung, heart or liver transplant, and many more die before they even get on to the transplant list.

National Transplant Week 2007, taking place from today until next Saturday, aims to increase people's awareness of becoming a donor and how they can help save others' lives.

DESPERATE FOR DONORS

Almost 950 lives have been saved in the UK through heart, lung, liver or combined transplants in the past year, according to the NHS.

While success stories produce relieved smiles for the transplant patient and their family, thousands of others desperate for a suitable donor are still waiting. Over 7,200 patients were listed as actively waiting for a transplant at the end of March 2007.

" Organ donation is still a problem in the UK," says Sue Johnstone of Transplants in Mind, which organises National Transplant Week.

" The situation's getting better but when you think there's only 14.4 million people registered on the Organ Donor Register, which is only 23% of the population, we still have a very long way to go."

When asked, 90% of people surveyed agreed with organ donation. So why the shortfall on the register?

"Education is essentially the problem," Johnstone says. "It's getting people to talk about their own demise, which of course is very difficult for anybody."

TRANSPLANT SHORTFALL

The donor situation may be desperate now, but it's set to get worse. The number of people needing a transplant is expected to rise steeply over the next decade due to an ageing population and an increase in kidney failure.

Finding suitable donors for ethnic minorities is also proving increasingly difficult. Black people are three times as likely as the general population to develop kidney failure and the need for organs in the Asian community is three to four times higher than that of the white community.

Johnstone explains: "One of the major problems we're having is getting ethnic minorities to sign on to the Organ Donor Register. Some automatically assume they can't be a donor because of religious reasons but that's not true - it's personal choice.

" It makes life so much easier when a potential donor comes up if they are the same ethnic minority as the potential recipient."

TALKING IT OVER

Signing on to the Organ Donor Register is a vital step forward in helping to save lives after your death. But discussing your wishes with friends and relatives is also vitally important.

Johnstone says: " What we're trying to do is get people to make their decision known by signing on to the Organ Donor Register but, most importantly, discussing it with their next of kin so that they too are aware."

The 2006 Human Tissue Act now puts the donor's wishes as paramount, but it's still important to keep loved ones informed to avoid further upset. "The one thing we want to stress to people is to please tell your next of kin to avoid difficulties down the line," Johnstone says. "It will make their life a lot easier because they know exactly what you wanted. It also eliminates the shock and questions they would have to answer or think about at such a difficult time."