I am a organ/blood/marrow donor and this subject is particularly close to me since I lost my grandfather to kidney failure as well as I’ve had others lose their lives, since they could not find donor match.  A lot of people just don’t get the importance of being a donor; this is especially true of some who lost a loved one and passed on the opportunity to donate their organs.  When I was 15 y.o. my friend was killed in a car accident and his family donated all viable organs, which led to six different transplants and his mother simply explained that her son now lives in six lives.  What an awesome outlook; my personal thoughts are that if I die I will no longer need my organs, so this will be my last opportunity to help someone else. 

There are some simple steps to start the process of becoming a donor, as follows:

1-Sign up with your State’s Organ and Tissue Registry and get typed

4-Put a declaration in your medical file and discuss your decision with your doctor

Over 92,000 people are waiting on the U.S. organ transplant list for the gift of life. Each day, about 74 people receive transplants. Due to the shortage of donated organs in 2005 nearly 6,500 people died waiting for an organ transplant. That translates to 19 people dying each day.

Additional Organ Donation Statistics

• Nearly 93,000 men, women and children are currently waiting for life-saving transplants.
• Every 12 minutes another name is added to the UNOS National Transplant Waiting List.
• In 2005, there were 21,215 deceased organ donors and 6,895 living organ donors for a total of 28,110 organ transplants.
• In 2005, 44,000 grafts were made available for transplant by U.S. transplant banks.
• Approximately 1,000,000 tissue transplants are performed each year.

Current Organ Donations Statistics

• Waiting List Candidates: 92,925 as of 9/17/06 2:50 pm
• Transplants Done: From January - June 2006 14,697
• Donors: From January - June 2006 7,461

Sources:
Donate Life America. Donation Statistics. At: http://www.donatelife.net/facts_stats.html
UNOS. 2006. Data. Statistics updated by the Minute. At: http://www.unos.org/
Organdonor.gov Home Page. At: http://organdonor.gov/
Mayo Clinic Staff. 2006. Organ donation: Don’t let myths stand in your way. At: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/organ-donation/FL00077

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this post or if there’s a certain subject that you’d like highlighted and I’ll do the research and post it to http://help.loreals.com