Become an organ donor
AUGUST is National Organ Donor Awareness Month. The aim is to highlight the plight of people in need of transplants, to recognise those who have donated and to encourage more people to do it.
The Organ Donor Foundation (ODF) said the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on the number of transplants performed.
“A dramatic decrease was noted, which resulted in many patients waiting for their transplants having to die. All live donations had stopped and there has been more than a 50% reduction in donors since the Covid19 outbreak, which equated to a 75% compounded reduction,” the foundation said.
It said that it was possible for one to donate a kidney or partial liver while alive, further noting two kinds of live donors, such as the elective donor, who is usually a family member of the recipient or someone to whom they are not related.
The other was an altruistic donor, someone who made the decision to donate an organ to a stranger purely to give the gift of life to another.
To be a live donor, one would be required to be in optimal health and an ideal body weight.
It was also possible for people to donate tissue in instances where the bone removed during hip replacement surgery, the femoral head, can be used to treat bone cancer and bone defects, and skin removed during abdominoplasty surgery (tummy tuck) or mammoplasty surgery (breast reduction) can be donated and would be used as biological bandages for severe burn wounds.
For a transplant to take place, the donor needed to have a matching blood type and meet criteria that include tissue typing and antibody cross-matching, which all have to match to a recipient.
Dr Dave Thomson, the chairperson of the South African Transplant Society, said all organs were in short supply, with many patients dying on the waiting list. This was especially where there was no option like dialysis and heart, lung and liver failures.
He added that there was a shortage in every corner of the world, but the country was particularly poor because of low deceased donation rates.
“We get 1.6 deceased donors per million population (pmp).
“Spain gets 47 pmp and Brazil, our level economy, gets 16 pmp.
“Kidneys dominate the list, as they are the only organ with a long-term support modality (dialysis).
“Patients with other organ failures have a much shorter window on the waiting list and limited support options that keep them healthy enough to undergo a transplant,” said Thomson.
He said that there was a need to reform the system with a co-ordinated central authority ensuring quality assurance and improvement throughout the process.
It begins with a good end-of-life care routinely incorporating donations as part of the offering.
Nomsa Sibaya, 45, said that it was important for people to become organ donors as there was an intense struggle suffered by people with organ failures, with challenges ranging from expensive treatment to unbearable pain.
Sibaya, who received a kidney from her twin sister in October 2012, noted that a drastic change had taken place in her life since.
“When I was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2010, I had to begin my dialysis shortly after.
“It was not easy because I suffered a lot of weight loss from 65kg to 42kg due to the treatment I was undergoing,” she said.
“I could not walk long distances or stand for hours, because I was constantly exhausted, but after the transplant, I regained my life, gained weight and went back to living a normal healthy life,” said Sibaya.
Sibiya said she was forever grateful to her twin for making the donation, because it had added years to her life and gave her the opportunity to watch her children grow.