To donate an organ is to save a life! A courageous and generous choice that you can make for a loved one or for a patient waiting for a transplant is to provide the person concerned with what they need. Which organs can be donated? Do you have the right to give during your lifetime? What precautions should be taken? With this handy guide, you can make your decision and become an organ donor with complete knowledge in connection to organ donation. Today, 21,500 people are still waiting for a transplant. Each of us has a role to play!
Practical guide
First, what are the possible choices? You can decide to leave an organ after your death; or your entire body to an anatomy lab for teaching and research purposes. You can also make donations that, at first glance, may seem more modest and yet save lives every year. Donations of blood, platelets, plasma or spinal cord are all more valuable as to date; no treatment or synthetic medication can replace them. Organ and Tissue Donation is more important than you think.
How is organ donation possible?
You may probably know how a blood donation takes place but you may be unaware of organ donation. In the USA, the organ can be removed once the state of pronounced encephalic death, in other words, when the doctors have noted the irreversible destruction of the brain and its cognitive functions. Collection is preceded by research and serological tests to detect communicable diseases or medical history; depending on the results obtained, it is the doctors who will decide whether to go further with the process or not.
Expenses related
In accordance with the law, the traces of intervention are made invisible and the donor’s body is dressed in his own clothes and returned to his family; it can then proceed to the funeral of the deceased. If the funeral remains at the expense of the family, the full cost of organ removal is borne by Social Security.
For lack of donor
In fact, doctors do not perform organ harvesting without first asking relatives if they know the intentions of the deceased; in 32.5% of cases this leads to a refusal. Faced with this observation and the glaring lack of donor, the legislator has chosen to introduce into the Health Act the amendment hardening the refusal conditions. According to the amendment, organ donation is made a mandatory action if the one who is dead is of age. The physicians are allowed to remove the organs of the deceased so as to pass on the same to the others whose lives are at stake.
Why to donate?
Everyone is going to face death one day or the other. When you are dead and gone, it is obvious that your physical form goes to the soil. But the question here is, why do you have to let the soil eat up your body when it can be used to prolong the life of someone on earth? Just give a thought about it.
