Thursday 22 January 2009

16 Million People on the Organ Donor Register!

As I said in my previous blog Organ Donation was definitely a hot topic in the news today!

Click Here to see the BBC News article.

16 Million people have now signed up to donate their organs after their death, this has doubled since the 8 million that were on the register in 2001! In 2001, former Health Secretary Alan Milburn urged people to sign up to double the number from eight million then to 16 million in 2010, so that target has been achieved and a year early!

More than 1.6 million people in Scotland have agreed to donate their organs after death, more than any other part of the UK. (Click Here) The article features a young boy called Aaron who received a new liver and small bowel in 2000. His mum does continuous work to raise awareness of the importance of Organ Donation and set up the website transplantkids.co.uk to support children and families affected by transplantation and Organ Donation.


Health minister, Ann Keen, said: "It is fantastic news that 16 million people have put their names on the Organ Donor Register. But there is still much to do. We remain firmly committed to helping many more people benefit from a transplant and want to see organ donation rates rise significantly over the next four years from the current 800 donors to 1,400 per year by March 2013."

To read more about it Click Here.

Obviously all this is great news, but there is still a short fall in the amount of transplants taking place. There are over 8000 people on the transplant waiting list but over 1000 of these people will die this year waiting (thats 3 a day) as only 3000 transplants take place each year.

Hopefully this campaign get make a difference, and get people talking about organ donation or even better signing up to the organ donor register! (Click on the card below to sign up)



In other news... I wasn't able to go to London, as I have been Ill all week, I'm so disappointed as I was really looking forward to meeting my mentor Oli and taking the campaign a step further. Another date for my trip down will be arranged when I'm up to it!

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