SHARE
COPY LINK

HEALTH

Donor day designed to ease organ shortage

Saturday is “Organ Spending Day” in Germany and donor groups are hoping that an information programme in Dresden will encourage people to become organ donors.

Donor day designed to ease organ shortage
Photo: DPA

Only one in five people in Germany have agreed to donate their organs after their death, according to the German Association of Organ Donations.

Surveys show that when asked, more than 70 percent of Germans say they would become an organ donor, but few take the trouble to fill out the necessary form on an organ donor card to do that.

Experts estimate that every day three people die in Germany because they cannot get life-saving transplants.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” said Birgit Blome, the spokesperson for the foundation.

The Dresden gathering features the opportunity for visitors to speak with people whose lives were by organ donation.

Regina Nüßgen is one of those. At 62, she’s lived the past 16 years with the liver of an unknown motorcycle driver who died in Holland in an accident.

Germany participates in a donor cooperative along with several other European nations. Donor organs are registered into a central system and allocated based on need.

Last week, parliament voted in favour of a new law designed to encourage people to consider donation. By the new law, everyone living in Germany will be asked at five-year intervals whether they want to donate organs after their death.

The Local/DPA/mw

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.