Save someone else’s life: Before you die you should say yes to becoming an organ donor

Rarely does one encounter a situation where complete despair comes together with hope – as is the case with the death of someone who has agreed to donates his organs.

The need for donors is tremendous -and growing- because medical advances and an increasing average lifespan have created more and more opportunities for such a life-saving organ transplant.

From the 1970s on, when medication to suppress the immune system was developed and it thus became possible to inhibit the rejection of a transplanted organ, transplants have become a source of great hope for people with congenital heart Fehler and disease-ravaged lungs. Donated kidneys can also vastly improve the quality of life for kidney dialysis patients; diabetics can hope to live without insulin injections with a donated pancreas and the vision-impaired can hope to overcome blindness.

Success rates have gotten to be quite high- almost 90% of kidney transplants, for example, succeed. After five years 74% of all kidneys still function properly.

Most nations cannot provide enough organs to meet the needs of their populations, hence many heart and lung patients die on the waiting list to receive a donated organ. 

Many people could be considered  as suitable organ donor sinsHIV, metastasized cancer and are free of certain infectious diseases. Potential organ donors and recipients can be matched according to blood group and tissue typing techniques and are registered on computer programs run by regional, national or international foundations that act as coordinators and provide transportation.

Transplants are based on purely medical reasons. Every effort is made to ensure that financial considerations or interested parties cannot intervene in this process. For example, the two independent doctors that are required to verify brain-dead status in the donor, are not allowed to have any connection with the donor process.  Live donors is possible from parent to child, sibling to sibling and husband to wife, for example. Organs that come in pairs or that can be segmented are suitable for these types of transplants. Of course organs that have a high regeneration rate such as blood, bone marrow, sperm and egg cells are commonly donated from live donors.

There are very many laws that govern organ donation from country to country. Organ donor cards are available over the internet, in doctors’ offices and pharmacies.

Although donation is anonymous, next of kin often find some comfort in knowing that a transplant has  been successful and can be informed of this by the coordinator if requested.

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