Organ Donation

A few years ago, I signed up to be an organ donor. I even said they could take the piano.

Welcome, to those of you who are new to my lame puns and public health interests. Today I am talking organ donation. If you can't be bothered reading ahead, here is my argument:

Australia needs to adopt an Opt-out (Or presumed consent) stance on organ donation, and my reason is thus: you don't need your organs once you are dead. Blunt, but 100% accurate.

In Australia, somewhere around 1500 people are on organ donation waiting lists at any time. This could be your Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Cat or Dog, or your entire Facebook friends list....several times over in my case. A single person donating their organs, if viable, can change up to 10 peoples lives, and in 2014, 378 viable donors were able to save the lives of 1117 fellow Australians. That still leaves a shortfall of around 400 people and that's just lousy.

The tricky thing with organ donation is that not everyone who is signed up to be an organ donor will have a viable death, that is, the most viable organs are harvested from those who are declared brain dead - but whose other organs are still working. Often, this means that the most viable donors need to already be in hospital in their final stages of life, as the use of ventilators to keep oxygen to the blood and therefore the organs is critical. Many people with long term illness are not treated in hospital, as they may prefer to stay in their homes, and most without long term illness who find themselves in a fatal situation will be no-where near a hospital when the time comes - getting these people to a hospital in their dying moments so they can have their organs donated isn't always feasible or even possible.

It is for this reason that we need to maximise the number of people who are even organ donors in the first place, so that we are maximising the potential number of donors.

There are a number of countries in the world who have adopted opt-out or assumed consent method -which works by saying ' You are an organ donor. Unless you tell us you don't want to be' rather than the current opt-in situation in Australia where it is a case of 'You are not an organ donor. Unless you get around to filling in some forms to tell us that you want to be when you already have a pretty busy life and really it's not something you want to think about right now so maybe I will just leave it for a bit'.

A quick Google tells me that Israel has a funky system whereby if you are signed up to be an organ donor, and you require medical treatment, you will get preferential treatments over someone needing treatment who isn't a donor! Yay organ donors!

Wales brought in assumed consent in 2013!

Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Hungary, Luxembourg and Slovenia all have presumed consent!

Like what seems like a lot of things at the moment, Australia is dragging its arse on this topic, and I suspect this is for political reasons; too many politicians are afraid to bring controversial things to the table for fear of losing political seats.

There is one potential barrier to this, and it is paying people to become organ donors - this leads to a minefield of ethical questions and in my mind, could lead to an increase in crime, and an appearance on the black market of illegally harvested organs.

To finish up today: who are you helping by donating your organs? Up to ten people, as I said before. Babies, children, teenagers, parents.... anyone with failing organs, and this includes sufferers of Cystic Fibrosis. What a thing to be able to do!

To repeat my earlier line, you don't need your organs once you are dead. Statistically, they probably won't even be able to use yours. But if you aren't signed up, it's not going to happen either way, and the ten people whose lives you could have saved will have to wait for someone else to pass away in a way that allows for organ donation.

While we wait for changes to organ donation, and I do think it will happen one day, what you can do is this - CLICK HERE AND SIGN UP - and make sure you tell your loved ones about your decision so if the time comes, your wishes are respected.

Over and out bloggers, and blogesses!