Hundreds More Transplants, But More Organ Donors Still Needed, UK

Main Category: Transplants / Organ Donations
Article Date: 09 Oct 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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Almost a million more people registered to become organ donors in the last year and hundreds more lives were saved in the UK through organ transplants according to a new report, launched by Health Secretary Andy Burnham today.

The report details the progress made in the first year of the Organ Donation Taskforce Implementation Programme, set up by the Government to increase organ donation by more than 50% by 2013 with the aim of enabling the NHS to carry out more than 1,400 extra transplants every year.

The Programme aims to do this by implementing the 14 recommendations of made by the Organ Donation Taskforce in January 2008. The report shows the following progress has been made since the implementation team began its work in June 2008:

- A 7% increase in people signing on to the Organ Donor Register. This is now more than one in four of the population (16.3 million people, 27% of the UK);

- A rise of 11% in people donating after death - providing 172 extra transplants

- A record rise of 12% in living organ donors - providing 104 extra transplants

- A total of 3516 people received a life-changing organ transplant in 2008/09

- An extra 100 Donor Transplant Co-ordinators have been appointed, with further recruitment currently underway

- 133 Clinical Leads appointed in hospitals with the highest donation potential and another 60 to be appointed by March 2010

Andy Burnham said:

"I am delighted to see that many more people are now donating organs both while they are still alive and after they have died which has helped to save hundreds of lives. We have made an excellent start, but there is still a long way to go.

"We will continue to support the NHS so that we can achieve our aim to save an extra 1400 lives each year through the amazing gift of organ donation. We are aiming to get 20 million people on Organ Donor Register in 2010, working towards 25 million by 2013.

"We have already invested £16.5million to implement the taskforce's recommendations with a further £26.5million being invested in 2009/10."

National Clinical Director for Transplantation, Chris Rudge, said:

"I would like to thank everyone working with us to implement the Taskforce recommendations in particular the hundreds of Donor Transplant Co-ordinators, Clinical Leads for Organ Donation and Non-Clinical Champions, who are putting the Taskforce's vision in to practice. Their work will help to ensure that in future, organ donation becomes a usual part of NHS practice."

These excellent results are due to a new organisational structure that provides a more a joined-up way of working within the NHS and making organ donation usual, rather than unusual across the health service.

We expect to have all the extra NHS staff recruited and in place by March 2010 so that the full impact of the new system will drive organ donor numbers up even further.

Source
Department for Health, UK

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