July 22, 1993. Copyright, 1993, Graphic News. All rights reserved

NATIONAL TRANSPLANT WEEK HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR ORGAN DONATION
By Julie Hacking

LONDON, July 22, Graphic News- The climax of National Transplant Week will be the Great North Transplant Games taking place in Newcastle upon Tyne from July 22-25, in which all 750 competing men, women and children are recipients of heart, lungs, liver or kidney transplants. HRH The Princess of Wales is due to vist the games on July 23 to meet the competitors and to present medals to the winners of the golf tournament.

National Transplant Week aims to focus attention on the need for donation of organs. With improvements in science, more and more people become medically suitable for transplantation but a shortage of donor organs limits operations able to be performed. 5,000 people each year need major organ transplants and many more could benefit from cornea, heart valve, bone and other tissue grafts, or life saving bone marrow operations. 
To meet this need entirely would require twice the number of major organs usually available in any one year and sufficiently increased amounts of other tissue. Yet according to Transplants in Mind (TIME), a group formed to promote organ donation and transplantation, only a very slight increase in organ donations would see the success rate of transplants increase dramatically, matched by a corresponding fall in costs. 

This is because lengthy delays on the waiting list mean the patient is usually very seriously ill by the time the transplant is performed, accentuating the risks of surgery. One in four people in need of a heart transplant die while on the waiting list and while the operation has an 85% success rate, the critical, post-operative period, when the new organ may be rejected by the host, lasts 15-30 days. With even just a few more organs available waiting time would be reduced, recipients would be generally healthier and might need to occupy the vitally needed intensive care bed for perhaps only 10 days, thereby halving the overall cost of the operation, currently about £25,000.

TIME wants the issue of organ donation to become a natural part of everyday thinking. Organ donations always rise following a well-publicised case – usually involving a child, such as Rhys Daniels, who last weekend underwent a heart and bone marrow transplant in Bristol, or Laura Davies, who last year received a liver and bowel transplant – but this level of consciousness must be constant if many more lives are not to be needlessly lost.

Source: Transplant Information Bureau, TIME (Transplants in Mind)