THE OFFICIAL WORD

Under Australian law, health professionals are required to keep information regarding organ donors and transplant recipients confidential. Only non-identifying information is permitted to be shared between donor families and recipients. DonateLife acts as a conduit for anonymous letter correspondence. Transplant recipients are encouraged to write an anonymous letter of thanks, then deliver their correspondence to their transplant unit in an unsealed envelope. All correspondence is reviewed by DonateLife before being forwarded to donor families. Dependant on individual DonateLife office policies, correspondence with identifying information may be returned to the sender for a rewrite or ‘sanitised’ with a black marker before being forwarded.