13-year-old organ donor helped eight people after her death
A 13-YEAR-OLD girl who died of a brain aneurysm has helped eight different people through organ donation – the highest number on record, experts said.
NHS Blood and Transplant data shows that Jemima Layzell, who died in March 2012 at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, is the only recorded donor in the UK whose solid organs have been transplanted into eight people.
The discovery was made after staff began trawling records for donors who had helped the most people.
A typical donation usually results in an average of 2.6 transplants. Jemima, from Horton in Somerset, was a pupil at Taunton School. She collapsed as her family prepared a party for her mother’s 38th birthday. She died four days later.
In total, eight of her organs were donated – her heart, small bowel, pancreas, both kidneys, both lungs, and her liver was split and transplanted into two people.
The eight recipients included five children from different parts of the country.
Her mother, Sophy Layzell, 43, a drama tutor, said: “We knew Jemima was willing to be a donor following a conversation about it a couple of weeks before her unexpected death.
“The conversation was prompted by the death of someone we knew in a crash.
“They were on the register but their organs couldn’t be donated because of the circumstances of their death.
“Jemima had never heard of organ donation before and found it a little bit unsettling but totally understood the importance of it.”