The Gifts That Keep on Giving

WHEN Southland’s first liver transplant recipient Tracy Holmes celebrated an early milestone in her happily successful story, The Southland Times goofed in a caption and said she’d received a kidney. The mortified reporter explained, rather unsatisfactorily, that he’d confused them because they were both meats he tended to push to the side of his plate.

Forgive the inelegant comparison, but it does seem there’s still a distressing tendency for New Zealand to push away the rather more high-stakes issue of organ donation.

It’s commonly known that when the life — or if you prefer, the spirit — has flown from our body, what remains may, in the right circumstances, have the potential to save or transform lives. In impressive numbers, New Zealanders indicate on their drivers’ licences that they are willing donors. In heartbreaking numbers, the actual numbers of donations are small. We’re talking 38 deceased donors last year, for the benefit of 122 New Zealand patients who received 68 kidneys, 32 livers, 12 hearts, 13 lungs, 20 corneas, 14 heart valves and some skin. Yet by international standards, this is a low level of activity. People are suffering and dying as a result.

On the face of it, a much happier alternative for liver patients, at least, made its way into our columns on Saturday, with the account of a living-donor transplant between two Southland friends. Kerry McIntyre donated two-thirds of her liver to Joanne Waghorn. Because surgically reduced livers grow back (in a way that so much of our body regrettably doesn’t) the transplant has proven successful without impairing Mrs McIntyre’s future health. So far 20 living-donor transplantations have been performed since 2002; each one successfully.

This is, in itself, an uplifting story. Unexpectedly, perhaps, one of the surgeons involved, Professor John McCall, portrayed living-donor transplantation very much a plan B because it remains a major surgical operation for the donor, with the attendant risks of any such procedure. Deceased donation is simply better. It wasn’t an option in Joanne Waghorn’s case because the cupboard was bare.

It is now widely understood that even though a person records their donor status on their driver’s licence, a family member could veto this on the day. National MP Jackie Blair failed in her bid for a national register of donors whose wishes could not be overturned, because MPs were told there was no evidence that registers increased donation rates, and that intensive care specialists didn’t want to remove organs against the wishes of distraught family members.

Tracy Holmes has been an ardent campaigner for people’s right to have their indicated wishes respected, free of family interference.

Bottom line, she’s right. But that’s not always happening.

Given this, Professor McCall highlights an important step that each of us needs to take. It turns out that families protest when the donor hasn’t said anything to them about it. In their distress they mistrust that a tick on a licence form really reflects their views. But when people have expressed a clear wish to their loved ones, the family almost never override that wish.

Which raises a simple, important point. Are you a willing donor? If so, then who have you told? The answer could save a lot of grief, or a life or two.

(c) 2008 Southland Times, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.