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Filed under: Health, Organ Donation

9 comments

This week is Australian Organ Donor Awareness Week - a time for reflection, decision and discussion. This week, we ask all Australians to learn the facts about organ donation, decide if you want to be donor, and then make sure that your family knows your decision.

Dean Jobson, who is on the organ donor waiting list, talks to the PM at the launch of Organ and Tissue Donor Week this week.

Today, more than 1700 Australians are waiting with bags packed for the call that will save their life. Waiting for the call that tells them the organ they desperately need has become available for transplant. Tragically, two of those Australians on average die every week before they get the call.

Australia’s rate of organ donation is low by international standards. In 2009, donations were made by 247 people resulting in 799 life-saving transplants. Although that rate is higher than the average of previous years, it is still clear that we need to do better.

Our rate isn’t relatively low because Australians don’t support organ donation - more than 80% of us do. And it’s not low because we lack a strong community voice - we have an army of committed advocates in our community who’ve been arguing for higher donation rates for years.

Our rates have been low because of fragmented messages and a lack of focussed resources where it matters.

The Rudd Government stepped up to the plate with its Organ Donation Reform Package in 2008. For the first time, an Australian Government is driving and funding a national plan that sees a consistent message across the country. Our reforms are funding 160 medical specialists in 76 hospitals across Australia trained and responsible for ensuring that hospitals are equipped for the task of lifting our donation rates.

The final decision whether donation will proceed is taken by the family or next of kin, even where their loved one has registered as a donor. Research tells us, though, that as many as 50% of Australians don’t know the wishes of their family members in this respect. That’s why this year’s Organ Donation Awareness Week focuses on the need to have that discussion with your family - it ensures your wishes will be met andmakes it easier for your family to make a decision at a painful and difficult time

Discussions about organ donation are difficult; they involve a discussion about death. The circumstances that give rise to organ donation are always deeply tragic, but unavoidable tragedy can lead to other lives being saved. Every time a grieving family agrees to donate the organs of a loved one, the lives of up to ten other Australians can be saved. In this Organ Donor Awareness Week, please give that some thought.

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9 comments

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- Adam Diver says:
  
  07:04am | 26/02/10
  
  No one neds thier organs when they are dead. Just take them I can’t imagine anyone (even in the afterlife) would begrudge giving 1-6 people a new chance at life.
  
  If you register as an organ donor your family should have no say. Change the law than you can get rid of this stupid week (like we don’t have enough).
  
  Reply
- Steve of Cornubia says:
  
  07:58am | 26/02/10
  
  Yup, it’s definitely an election year. Previously too busy to even spend a few minutes in Australia, now Emperor Rudd is seen daily, talking to ordinary folk, school children one day, redundant insulation installers the next, and needy sick people today.
  
  Reply
- John A Neve says:
  
  08:03am | 26/02/10
  
  Adam,
  
  Come on, every one knows you don’t go to heaven if there are parts missing. Why do you think the families make such a HooHah over the matter?
  
  Reply
- Lynda of By The Seaside says:
  
  10:34am | 26/02/10
  
  Organ donation is a decision that has to be made by individuals and is a very noble thing to do. However, with the Federal Government moving to allow meat to be imported from countries that have had incidents of Mad Cow Disease, what impact will that have on the people of Australia. This disease is not one that can be identified immediately. It takes many years to become apparent. There is no medication nor treatment available to treat this insidious disease. This does not augur well for any of us.
  Those people who visited the UK when Mad Cow Disease was detected, cannot be a blood donor in Australia. If meat is allowed to be imported what impact will that have on the future of blood donors and organ donors in this country? It is a very wide window that could jeopardise the whole structure of Australia. Lengthy consideration and delberation should be applied to a policy that could have far reaching and dire consequences for everyone. This is a decision that the Australian public should be included in before anything is proceeded with and yet the Federal Government is proceeding as early as next week with allowing the importation of meat to Australia. It all seems to have taken place with great haste and little publicity. I, for one, am very concerned.
  
  Reply
John A Neve says:

10:46am | 26/02/10

Lynda,

While you have a point, I put this to you. You have a terminal illness which can be halted by a transplant. Do you accept death or take a risk on a donated organ?

I know what my choice would be.
- Henry says:
  
  11:13am | 26/02/10
  
  There is real evidence that if those in a critical condition due to trauma have a donor card THEN the medical staff go into organ harvest mode. This is fact from someone who has seen it first hand and seen those with identical injuries survive due to not being an organ donor and receiving better care.
  
  That is way I and many of my medical colleagues DO NOT want to be organ donors and why I would advise all my friends and family to do the same.
  
  Reply
John A Neve says:

12:06pm | 26/02/10

Henry,

That is out and out B***S****, the chances of two people having “identical injuries” must be millions to one. The fact that some people survive and other sadly do not, has a host of reasons, age, general health, time lag, doctor etc, etc.

If you have “medical colleagues” who know of corruption? I can only hope they have reported same, if not they are as guilty as those supposedly involved.
Laura says:

01:48pm | 26/02/10

I agree with John. I don’t think medical practitioners are lagging just to get organs.

But Henry, if that really was happening, or if people are worried about that, it doesn’t stop them from specifying in their will that they’d like to be organ donors, or simply having the conversation with their family so their wishes are known. That way, their name isn’t on the organ donor list so they’re not going to “risk” not getting proper treatment, and yet if the worst happens and they don’t make it, they can still be organ donors because their family will know their wishes.
Steve of Cornubia says:

03:03pm | 26/02/10

I don’t think that would work, Laura, because it takes time to enact a will and organs have to be collected pretty soon after death if they’re going to be viable.

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