Mandatory donation ruled out
Organ donors should ensure their families are aware of their wishes but donation should not be mandatory, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
“I do favour an increase in organ donation, absolutely,” she said.
Ardern, who is a donor, said people who were donors needed to ensure their families were aware of their wishes and fulfilled that wish.
“Even though there are limited circumstances in which organ donation is favourable and an option, we need to make sure that when that happens and someone says they want to be, that that isn’t overturned,” Ardern told Newstalk ZB.
The Government was doing some work to increase organ donation rates but mandatory donation was not part of that.
Jessica Manning, 25, is petitioning the Government to make donation mandatory due to the low number of donors. Manning has been told she will die within two years if she does not have a double organ transplant.
She was born with six heart conditions — a double inlet left ventricle, hypoplastic right ventricle, atrial septal defect, ventricular septal defect, transposition of the great arteries and leaky valves — and in 2016 discovered she had severe liver disease as a side effect of one of her many heart surgeries.
“Even if the law doesn’t change . . . so as long as it got the conversation started I was happy,” Manning said.