Health reporter(wp/es):
An NHS-led campaign is urging people to talk to their families about donating their organs during Organ Donation Week.
The Words Save Lives campaign is encouraging people to ‘say yes’ to organ donation to combat donation opportunities lost every year because families don’t know if their loved ones wanted to be a donor or not.
The NHS says just 1 in 3 adults has told their partner or family they want to be an organ donor.
The UK currently has a system that means you have to register to be an organ donor and doctors can only remove organs from people who have registered.
However, a new opt-out system dubbed “Max’s Law” will be in place by 2020 in England if Parliament approves it, meaning adults would be presumed organ donors unless they have specifically confirmed their decision not to be.
There are currently 6,133 people on the transplant waiting list and in the UK in 2017, 411 people died before the right donor was found.
45-year-old Gareth Evans, from Stockport, has been waiting nine years for a heart transplant – longer than anyone else in the UK on the current list of heart transplant patients.
Gareth one of dozens of people spearheading the NHS’s campaign this Organ Donation Week.
Here’s everything you need to know about organ donation, including what you can donate and how to register:
What types of donation are there?
The NHS lists three different ways to donate. These are:
- Donation following brain death (DBD): This person would have had a severe brain injury and permanently lost the potential for consciousness and the capacity to breathe.
- Donation following circulatory death (DCD): This is when a person has irreversible loss of function of the heart and lungs after a cardiac arrest from which the person cannot or should not be resuscitated. It can also be the planned withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from a person cared for in a critical care environment.
- Living donation: Whilst you are still alive you can choose to donate organs, most commonly, a kidney through a medical operation.
How do I register to become an organ donor?
Registering to become an organ donor only takes a few minutes.To become a donor, visit the NHS organ donation website and fill out a quick form, giving your personal details and explaining which organs and tissues you would like to donate.Once this has been submitted, your preferences will be added to the NHS Organ Donation Register by the NHS and you'll receive your organ donation card through the post.Is there an age limit for organ donation?
The NHS has no age limit for organ donors.For a child to register to be an organ donor, they must have a parent or guardian's consent after they die or until they're of the legal age of consent.Anyone over 80 years old is not eligible for cornea donation and anyone over 60 years old is not eligible for heart valves and tendons donations.What can I donate?
Your organs and tissues can be used for:- Kidney donation
- Heart donation
- Liver donation
- Lung donation
- Pancreas donation
- Small bowel donation
- Cornea donation
- Tissue and bone donation
Living donations include living kidney and liver donation and living bone and amniotic membrane donation.How do I know if I'm eligible to become an organ donor?
Most people will be eligible for an organ donation, but the NHS does have certain requirements.- Race and skin colour: although there are successful transplants between people of different ethnic groups, people from the same ethnic groups are more likely to be a close match.
- Screening: your blood will be tested for transmittable diseases including HIV and hepatitis, although if you are HIV positive, you may be able to donate to someone who already has HIV.
- Existing medical conditions: you cannot be a donor if you have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or cancer that has spread in the last 12 months
- for more details please visit:
- https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk
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