"There is a lack of donors. . . . You can't talk about transplant without talking about the need for more donations . . . B.C. has one of the lowest donation rates of anywhere in the industrialized world."
Aaron McArthur, Global TV BC reporter, Dec. 5, 2011
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Dr. Gregory Grant, intensive care physician and executive director of B.C.
Transplant, says that unlike the rest of Canada, where 70 per cent of people have put down their names, only 19 per cent of British Columbians have signed on to support organ transplants.
The situation may not be the result of hard heartedness on the part of our province, but rather a function of the fact that many willing donors simply do not know about B.C.'s online transplant registry. It's important that the trend be turned around.
No-one can predict when a person might arrive in a hospital emergency room in urgent need of a transplant.
When that happens, organ availability is critical to survival of the patient, but a physician has few ways outside of the registry to identify a willing donor.
In October 2010, BC Transplant - an initiative of the Provincial Health Services Authority - reported that 5,000 British Columbians had received transplants since 1968. That rate could be raised, however, if more people were to sign on to the program.
The organs most frequently needed are the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys; the latter two organs are also possible from living donors.
Donor information is kept confidential by both physicians and donor registries, but from the patients themselves we do know that at least three of the 5,000 recipients lived or still live on the North Shore.
The first of the three was West Vancouver impressionist painter Daniel Izzard who, in 1986 at the age of 63, became Canada's oldest heart recipient. He went on to live, travel and produce more of his wonderful paintings for another 21 years thanks to his donor. His transplanted heart was still doing fine when he died in 2007 due to complications from a fall.
Equally famous in their own ways are North Vancouver residents Margaret Benson and Jack Palmer.
Niamh Scallan featured this "librarian-student duo" in an April 25, 2011 North Shore News story, NV Recipients Speak Out.
Benson, who has lived in North Vancouver all her life, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of 14.
Remarkably, considering the usually inexorable course of that condition, it was not until Dec. 1, 1999 that, as Scallan wrote, Benson "received a lifesaving double-lung transplant when she was 40 years old."
When I had a long telephone chat with her in November, I quailed at the thought of trying to keep up with all she is doing in her busy life.
Not only has she become an inspirational speaker by profession, but she is also a half-marathon race-walker - and she holds the world record for 200 metres in her age category at the Transplant Games.
More than anything else perhaps, Benson says there is "not a moment" when she doesn't "thank the family who made that difficult decision to donate the organs of their loved one. They saved the lives of four people they had never met."
At the time of Scallan's article, Jack Palmer - a heart recipient at 14 weeks of age - was on track to graduate from Lynn Valley elementary this past summer.
BC Transplant credits its executive director, Dr. Greg Grant, with having "pioneered the introduction of organ donation following cardiac death in B.C.," and he was certainly enthusiastic about sharing information about this province's organ donor registry.
At the end of life, if a person has not listed with the registry and is not able to indicate their preference, it is left to the medical team to approach the already traumatized family and ask whether their loved one would have wanted their organs donated. It is extremely stressful for a physician who has worked hard to save a patient to find a sensitive way to now ask the family for an organ donation.
Elsewhere in Canada, hospitals have specialist coordinators who make that approach. Ontario leads with 22 in-hospital coordinators. British Columbia lags behind with only three people undergoing training - at Vancouver General, Royal Columbian and Kelowna General hospitals.
Last September, in an effort to overcome such traumatic situations for both family and physicians, the provincial government enacted "advanced directives" legislation which allows a person's registered wishes to prevail.
Like end-of-life wishes, the subject of organ donation is one of those touchy discussions we all like to avoid - until the worst of all possible times. The time to address it is now.
If you choose to register, sooner or later someone on the waiting list of hundreds - and their anxious families - will be forever grateful for your gift.
