Living Kidney Donation

Posts Tagged ‘altruistic donation’

UK – Would you like to take part in a documentary? I was contacted by Fiona Hill a producer for the BBC Science Unit. A documentary is being made about altruistic donation and in particular looking for recipients via social media such as Facebook. This is the message she has asked me to post. All communication is confidential and contacting Fiona by no way commits you to taking part in the documentary.
Fiona is a lovely lady, very easy to communicate with and she looks forward to receiving emails from anyone who might be interested or would like to know more.

Fiona Hill a producer for the BBC Science Unit is making a documentary about altruistic living organ donation for BBC Radio 4 and she would love to hear from you.

Talking to her doesn’t mean you have to be in the programme, but she really wants to hear from those of you who have used social media (or are planning now to launch a campaign) to appeal for an organ donor.

She would also very much like to talk to people who have in the past donated an organ to a complete stranger, inspired by appeals they have seen on social media, or perhaps somebody who is currently going through the process of offering to donate an organ to somebody in need.

You could contact Fiona by e mail at fiona.hill@bbc.co.uk and she is very happy if you would like the conversation to remain confidential.

I recently appeared on the Tonight programme “kindness of strangers” and later  on the BBC World News along with Dr. J. Lowney from matchingdonors.com to have a discussion on their organisation which was coming to the UK.

I contacted them to see if they would answer some questions that I and others had regarding their organisation and the role it had here in the UK.  They readily agreed to answer any questions I had but unfortunately, 5 week later they are still not answering any, regardless of repeated  requests. They are now ignoring me 🙂 .   Here is the (lengthy) list of questions I have put to them.  Anyone considering joining the organisation either as a donor or potential recipient may want to read these first before making a decision.  If matching donors responds to any questions I will publish them alongside the relevant question.

QUESTIONS:

The system

Paul Dooley is quoted as saying “The old system of ‘Give us your organ, we’ll decide where it goes’ no longer works. We have the ability to take our system to the UK and save their lives.”

Since the first non-directed altruistic donor was approved in 2007, the HTA have approved in total 160 donors 33 of which were approved in the first half of this year. There are also many potential donors being worked up at the moment with 30 at one transplant unit alone.

1.        Given that the altruistic donation system is very new in the UK, that the numbers of altruistic donors in the UK is increasingly very rapidly year-on-year, and also bearing in mind that the UK population, and thus the pool of potential donors, is a small fraction of that of the USA, on what basis can Paul Dooley justify his statement that our system is no longer working?

2.       Has matchingdonors.com had any legal challenges?

3.       Do all American transplant centres accept directed altruistic donors?

Patients

4.       Does your organisation inform transplant units that one of its transplant waiting list patients is registered with you?

To read more of the questions click this link
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