Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
ALISON PHILLIPS
Done it! Now loved ones like Natalie need not die
PATRICIA Carroll was doing the ironing when I called to tell her the news.
The news that in future children like her daughter Natalie may not have to die on the transplant waiting list as their organs fail.
News that the campaign she has courageously helped fight was worth it.
News that other mothers will not have to bear the lifetime of loss which she still must.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, still gripping the iron. “We’ve done it.”
I’ve seen the agony that families like Patricia’s have gone through when a loved one has died waiting for a transplant. Natalie was waiting for a pancreas and kidney when she passed away, aged 38 – but was still able to donate her heart valves to an eight-monthold baby. Of the 16 patients on her ward then, just three are still alive.
But during this campaign I’ve also met families whose lives have been transformed by successful transplants. People like Max Johnson’s mum Emma, who wanted to ensure other kids could share the new chance of life her son has been given. The Mirror was overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of our readers who backed the campaign – in print and online.
And by the readers who called our newsroom for updates on Max’s progress and their tears of joy when he received his new heart.
For this was a Mirror campaign in its truest sense, not driven by reporters sitting behind keyboards, but by Mirror readers across Britain who could see this law wasn’t right.
And demanded it be changed. Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party were fantastic in their support.
And now the Government, to its credit, has listened to us.
Lives will be saved.
Today we should all feel a bit like Max Johnson did when he heard the news: “Chuffed to bits.” MIRROR transplant boy Max Johnson last night praised the decision to change organ donor laws that could stop patients dying needlessly on waiting lists.
The delighted nine-year-old, who was one of the faces of our relentless campaign to save lives, said the historic move will give hope to thousands whose only chance of life is a new heart, liver, lung or kidney.
He spoke after Theresa May announced at the Tory conference yesterday she would be changing the law from one where donors need to be registered to an opt-out system.
Doctors, health campaigners, patients and MPS also hailed the Mirror’s stunning victory, that could save 500 people from death a year.
Max, whose life was saved by a heart transplant after he waited seven months for a donor organ, had appeared on our front page appealing to the PM to save him and countless others by changing the law.
He said: “I cannot believe it. I thought it would take so much longer… but yes. I know it will help other children like me.
“I hope they call it Max’s Law, it