Making it Real
Organ Donation
In the UK there are nearly 6000 people on the transplant waiting list. 300 people die every year on this list waiting in vain for an organ to become available for a transplant.
More than 80% of these people are waiting for kidneys, which are the easiest and safest organ to transplant from a living donor. A living donor kidney transplant is the gold standard treatment for end stage kidney failure. Each transplant SAVES the NHS around £200,000 over a ten year period.
The next highest number of people on the list are waiting for livers, which can also be successfully and fairly safely transplanted from a living donor, although these transplants are not so cost effective as kidney transplants, because the surgery is more expensive and the alternative to having a transplant is not long-term expensive (for the NHS) dialysis, but imminent death.
There isn't really a shortage of organs, there is a shortage of informed and willing LIVING organs donors. If only one in 10,000 members of the public were willing and safely able to donate an organ, we could end the transplant waiting list and associated stress and unnecessary deaths. The problems is lack of awareness about living donation.
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Read Sue's detailed article Living Donation is the Solution written in 2015 for the Flesh and Blood conference at Durham Cathedral. This article sparked interest from the Medical Ethicist for the Church of England, Brendan McCarthy, who started a series of meetings to discuss living organ donation and proposed the topic for the next C of E synod.