Organ Donation

I have been following (along with many many thousands of other people) a family's journey with Cystic Fibrosis ..... it takes too long to explain because it is an amazing story, if you have time go check out their blog. Anyways, in the USA April is organ donation month and so I thought that I'd try to draw your attention to how you can do that sort of thing in Canada.

I found an article on organ donation in Canada (it was written in 2001)...

Organ Donation in Canada

The current situation in Canada
More than 3,700 Canadians are awaiting organ transplants for kidneys, hearts, lungs, or livers, and thousands of others are in need of replacements for tissues such as corneas, heart valves, bone grafts, and skin.

Last year alone, 147 Canadians died while waiting for organs that never came because suitable donors were not found in time. Part of the problem lies with Canada having one of the lowest organ donation rates among industrialised nations. There are fewer than 14 donors per million people in this country, as compared with more than 31 in Spain. What's more, the gap between transplant patients on waiting lists and numbers of available organs is widening.

There's good news
The numbers above paint a picture that is hard to face. However, there is some good news:

• Nearly 98% of all kidney transplants, 90% of liver transplants, and 85% of heart transplants are successful;
• More than 1,800 organ transplants were performed in Canadian hospitals in 2000;
• Donor families say they are comforted by the feeling that their loved one's death was not in vain.

This gives Canadians all the more reason to take the time to make their wishes known either by filling out their province's organ donor card or registering their wishes through a provincial registry.

If you know me really well you'll know that I like to donate blood and also like to challenge other people to do so too. For more information on how you can do that in Canada click here.

I also was recently sent information on becoming a bone marrow donor and they REALLY need more people on this list because the match has to be so precise to work. Click here for more info.

And finally, click here for more info on becoming an organ donor and make sure that you let your friends and family know about your wishes to donate organs if you should die.