‘Marvellous’ rise in organ transplants (From Evesham Journal)

‘Marvellous’ rise in organ transplants

10:56am Thursday 14th February 2013 in News

A FOUR-fold increase in organ donation by county people in two years has been welcomed by a man whose daughter died while waiting for a transplant.

The people of Worcestershire provided organs for seven transplants in 2010 but this increased to 30 in 2012. However, 80 people in the county are still waiting for a transplant.

Michael Amies, aged 76, of Bridge Street, Pershore who is chairman of the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust Organ Donation Committee, said the donors who had come forward in the county had saved or transformed the lives of 30 people.

He said: “It’s marvellous.

Organ donation has now become part of what the staff do, not something extraordinary.

It is a change of mindset.

They have to make that awful decision, when a patient cannot be saved, to save other people.”

Mr Amies lost his 38-yearold daughter Catherine Amies in January 2010 while she was waiting for a double kidney and pancreas transplant only to discover she was herself a donor, helping to save others though she herself could not be saved.

In Wychavon, 41,800 people, or 35.8 per cent of the population, are on the register.

In the county as a whole 182,327 people are on the register (around 32 per cent of the county’s population).

An organ donation task force was set up in 2006 to increase organ donation over a five-year period.

Staff have also improved their rates of corneal retrieval with 10 corneas retrieved locally since June.

A 15-minute video played to 40 GP surgeries across Worcestershire which ran for three months has been one of the methods used to boost the number of donors.

For more information, visit organdonation.nhs.uk.