This case has brought a lot of attention to organ donation and how organs are distributed. And over the past few days I've seen numerous comments from people who are not very well educated about the subject of organ donation.
This needs to change.
I need a double-lung transplant and I am learning much more than most anyone needs to know. I don't know what the ramifications of this case will be concerning the future of organ transplantation. But I do know that the system was overhauled in 2005 to increase the effectiveness of allocating organs and I'm told it has been successful at procuring more organs and reducing the amount of people dying waiting for organs. Perhaps this will be a good time for the organization to re-evaluate things and make sure the system is still running smoothly.
Perhaps this is also a good time to talk about an underlying issue here. And that is, despite children under twelve dying every day who could potentially be donors, their families are not agreeing to organ donation. Only 20 deceased lung donors in 2012 were under the age of 10.
Statistically no child should die waiting for an organ.
After watching a movie the other night talking about organ donation, I told my hubby that if anything happened to our children, they absolutely would be organ donors...as hard as it is to think about, I can't imagine doing anything else...
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