THE MIRACLE OF ORGAN DONATION CHANGES LIVES

IT’S ORGAN DONOR AWARENESS WEEK, AND TALKED TO THREE WEXFORD PEOPLE WHO KNOW ITS BENEFITS

ORGAN DONOR Awareness Week takes place from March 31 to April 7 and three County Wexford people have been recounting their own stories of dialysis and the donor process.

The Irish Kidney Association is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Approximately 550 people in Ireland are awaiting life-saving heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas transplants – thanks to the gift of organ donation almost 3,500 transplanted people in Ireland are enjoying extended life.

The focus of Organ Donor Awareness Week is to raise awareness about the ongoing and ever-increasing demand for organ transplantation which relies on the public for organ donation. Its key message is that families need to talk to each other and keep the reminders of their willingness to donate visible by carrying the organ donor card and permitting Code 115 to be included on their driver’s licence.

The organ donor card has developed from what started out as the kidney donor card in the same year our organisation was established in 1978.

Organ Donor Awareness Week also serves as a fundraising exercise for the Irish Kidney Association. Throughout the week, the Association’s volunteers will be out on the streets, and in shopping centres throughout the country, distributing organ donor cards while selling ‘forget-me-not-flower’ emblems, brooches, pens and shopping trolley discs. All proceeds will go towards the Irish Kidney Association’s aid for patients on dialysis and those patients fortunate enough to have received a kidney transplant.

Free information fact files, which accompany organ donor cards, are obtainable from the Irish Kidney Association and are available nationwide from pharmacies, GP surgeries and Citizen Information Offices. Organ Donor Cards can also be obtained by phoning the Irish Kidney Association tel. 01 6205306 or free text the word DONOR to 50050 or visit www. ika.ie/card/.

Richie McAuley from The Ballagh is a kidney transplant recipient who underwent a kidney transplant in February 2016 following four-and-a-half years of dialysis treatment. Grateful to his deceased donor, Richie (35) said that, in his case,