‘Hélène Effect’ recruits organ donors

Double-lung recipient credited with increase

Hélène Campbell, who received two new lungs in April, is getting official credit for persuading Ontarians to volunteer to donate organs in record numbers last year.

Health Minister Deb Matthews even joined Campbell on Thursday night for a celebration dance.

“We were at an Ontario Lung Association event and she gave a delightful speech,” the minister said.

“And then she invited me up on stage with her. Not only she and I danced, but the whole room got up and danced.”

“For sure” the story of the young Ottawa woman has made more people sign up as donors, Matthews said.

“They call it the Hélène Effect because she has become such an advocate of organ donation.”

Awareness of her story makes it more common for family members to give consent for donation, Matthews said. Even if a person volunteers to donate organs, after that person dies the family must still consent.

“More and more people ... are seeing the benefit — someone like Hélène having a good and full life because someone gave her that gift.”

Campbell received her new lungs last April 6, Good Friday, and is now home in Ottawa.

Matthews said there’s been an upsurge provincewide in people registering to donate.

In 2012, 253 deceased Ontario donors contributed to 385 kidney transplants, 189 liver transplants, 104 lung transplants, 74 heart transplants, 23 kidney pancreas transplants, 20 pancreas transplants and one small bowel transplant.

However, in the same time period, nearly 100 people died while waiting for transplants.

The province says 196 families, in the absence of registered consent, declined to donate their relatives’ organs. This prevented an estimated 370 additional transplants.

Everything depends on whether people volunteer to donate before they die.

Ottawa was a little above the provincial average: 24 per cent of local residents are registered donors, compared with 22 per cent for the province overall.

Of 815,301 health card holders aged 16 or older, Ottawa had 195,405 registered donors.

The highest rates are mostly in Northeastern Ontario, where as many as 50 per cent of the people in Sudbury and Timmins and Sturgeon Falls have volunteered to donate.

Ontario’s six lowest-ranking communities are all suburbs on the northern edge of Toronto, including Concord (seven per cent) Woodbridge (eight per cent) and Vaughan (nine per cent).

In the Ottawa Valley, Arnprior stands at 20 per cent, Pembroke at 16 per cent, Hawkesbury 15 per cent, Carleton Place 22 per cent and Petawawa 25 per cent.

There’s a multiplier effect in saving lives because one donor can donate organs to as many as eight people.

But Matthews said signing the old paper donor card is no longer enough.

She wants people to sign up online at www.BeADonor.ca so that any hospital can quickly find out whether a person who dies suddenly is a registered donor.

“We’re seeing significantly increased numbers of people benefiting from organ transplant,” she said, “but we also know that every three days someone dies waiting for a transplant.

Besides organ donors, 1,468 tissue donors changed the lives of thousands of patients in 2012, donating corneas to restore sight, heart valves, bone and skin.