Monday, September 10, 2007

Transplant Headlines

Here are a few of the organ donation and transplant headlines from around the world this past weekend.

Video of a living donor kidney transplant operation
A reader from Australia has posted a link to the Geelong Advertiser's video about a Geelong woman who lost 20kg/44 lbs. so she could donate her kidney to her partner. This is the stop-motion video of the amazing surgery, done with the couple's permission to raise awareness. View video.

Hollywood Gives Organ Donation a Bad Rap
This item in the Washington AFRO American, a leader in Washington and Baltimore in providing coverage about organ donations and African Americans, highlights the misconceptions and negative images about organ donation that Hollywood tends to include in their storylines. It also notes that blacks are disproportionately underrepresented in the organ donation pool.

Inaccurate Hollywood storylines are skewing the public perception of organ donation, concluded a recent study.

These plots, including organs being sold in the black market and people with money receiving higher priority on waiting lists, are untrue, according to Susan Morgan, Ph.D., associate professor of health communication at Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Ind., and are affecting the number of people who are registering as organ donors, especially blacks.

Blacks are disproportionately underrepresented in the organ donation pool. According to Morgan, they are also the less knowledgeable about the importance of being a donor. Television shows that present negative images and ideas about organ donation "are not helping to correct this serious problem," Morgan added. Read the full story.

ER Nurse donates kidney to an anonymous recipient
This is another story about donors and recipients using the internet to find matching donors through MatchingDonors.com.

Read the Heartwarming story about emergency room nurse Margie Stevens-Belville who, fed up with seeing so many patients die while waiting for an organ donor, decided to become a donor herself and registered online with MatchingDonors.com.

CF sufferer waits for lung transplant and new nebuliser helps
This article in New Zealand's Tarankai Daily News reminds us of the constant struggle that Cystic Fibrosis patients have with a continuing battle of breathlessness, a wracking cough and low energy. Jonathan Fowler is a patient waiting for a double-lung transplant and every day he struggles for breath. But the struggle has been lessened recently with the introduction of a new nebuliser for delivering his drugs.

Jonathan (25) has cystic fibrosis (CF) - a disease he was born with and one that has seen him hospitalised about 50 times.

Fortunately, his days have been made easier lately by a modern nebuliser to administer his drugs.

Jonathan says the portable e-flow nebuliser has been "a major step forward". "With the old nebuliser, it took me about an hour a day to inhale my medication. With this it takes about 15 minutes. It's brilliant."

Read the Full article.


“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Sign Your Donor Card & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Download Donor Cards from Trillium Gift of Life Network

Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

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