National Donor Day
Share love, share life
Valentine’s Day, the holiday that celebrates love has a dual designation nowadays. Since 1998, Feb. 14 has been National Donor Day, too, to serve as a reminder of the importance of discussing the lifesaving possibilities of organ and tissue donation.
“National Donor Day is a good time to have a conversation with family that you would like to be an organ donor; I encourage everyone to talk about it,” says Dr. Mikel Prieto, surgical director of the kidney and pancreas transplant programs at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Registering to become a donor is like sending a valentine to more than 100 people. One deceased donor can save up to eight lives through organ donation and enhance 100-plus lives through the lifesaving and healing gift of tissue donations, according to the American Transplant Foundation.
“If they also donate tissue like eyes and bone, then it can spread to many people,” Prieto says.
And yet, 22 people die each day – 8,000 each year -- waiting for an organ. The number one problem is too few donors.
Nationwide, there are 114,000 transplant hopefuls, including children, on the national waiting list. Nearly a quarter -- 21.5 percent -- are Hispanic, data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) shows. Kidney is the organ Hispanics need most, followed by liver. As of Feb. 10, there were 20,977 Hispanic patients on the waiting list for a kidney, 2,529 waiting for a liver. Last year, 5,990 Hispanic patients received a transplanted organ.
More Hispanic organ donations are needed, Prieto says, because “a transplant recipient is more likely to find a match among donors with the same ethnicity.”
“We look for matching based on HLA (human leukocyte antigen),” he says. “The blood type of the donor and recipient have to be compatible.”
Education is key to increasing the supply of donors, both living and deceased, Prieto says. Take, for example, the mistaken belief that living kidney donors will forever suffer poor health. The “consequences of donating a kidney are minimal in terms of health effects.”
“Kidney donors can feel very comfortable that they can donate a kidney … and be back to living a normal life,” Prieto says.
Last year, living donors accounted for 19 percent of organ donations.
There are myths, too, around having “organ donor” imprinted on a driver’s license or state identification card. The medical establishment won’t take a donor’s organs prematurely, and doctors won’t let a donor die in order to get the organs sooner.
“People need to trust the health care system. Everyone will do everything they can to save a patient, but people won’t come forward until they get educated,” says Prieto who has performed transplant surgeries since 1989.
Becoming a donor offers everyone a rare opportunity to save lives.
“Frankly, I don’t understand how people can say no,” Prieto says. “Donating a kidney is a relatively straightforward, low-risk opportunity to help a human being and see the amazing change that you’ve been able to facilitate.”
Prieto performs one-quarter of transplant surgeries at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which last year did 267. He says the success rate of transplantation today is “awesome,” and safe for donors and suggests that Hispanics are particularly well-disposed toward organ donation.
“The Hispanic community is close-knit and family-oriented, the perfect community for this philosophy of giving the gift of life to spread.”
