Organ Donation Defined

What is organ donation?

Organ donation is where you can donate solid organs and tissue to other people after your death and in some cases when you're still alive. And the reason for donating these organs to other people is so that you can either save their lives or, in most cases, improve the quality of life.

Why is it important?

Organ donation is so important because there are so many people actually on the organ donor waiting lists. At this time, we've got over 8000 people in the U.K. waiting for organs. And every year we're losing over 400 of them because their organs come too late for them. And approximately 170 of those are for children. And people don't realize that every age gets affected by organ donation for transplantation.

What is tissue donation?

Tissue donation is things like skin, bone, tendons, corneas. Especially corneas, because you can actually give the sight to people with your corneas. With skin, it's used for burn victims so that they won't have to have so many grafts, tendons for sport injuries, bones for road traffic accidents. There are so many things that you can actually donate.

What is living kidney donation?

Living kidney donation is where somebody actually donates one of their kidneys. We all have two kidneys and we can actually survive on one. You donate your kidney to another person, your next of kin, your sibling, your mother, your father, your husband, or your wife. All these people can donate their kidney to somebody else during their lifetime.

Where can I find information about organ donation?

You can find out about organ donation from our website, which is www.transplantsinmind.org.uk, or you can go onto www.uktransplant.org.uk, which is the NHS Health Authority website.

How many donations are needed a year?

You can never tell how many organ donations you are going to need each year, because of the sheer fact that you don't know how many people are going to need the organs. Each year it is increasing, due to the fact of diabetes, where kidneys are concerned, and people's way of life. It's the case of how long is a piece of string. You just don't know how many organs we're going to need each year.

How many successful transplants take place every year?

There are over 3 000 successful transplants each year. Of course, we need more than that because of the fact that we have got, at this time, over 8 000 people waiting for organs as we speak.