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Montage of Wing Point in Bainbridge Island and the Edmonds Ferry.

Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

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Health

Need for Organ Donations Increases

[ Originally Published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ]

[ More infomation on organ donation efforts in Congress ]

4 May 2004

by Jay Inslee U.S. Representative (WA-01)

Scott Bennett has hiked and climbed in the Cascades on many occasions, including a successful summit of Mount Rainier. For the past decade, however, he has had occasional difficulty climbing a simple flight of stairs. Scott needs a heart transplant and has been on an organ donation waiting list for more than four years.

Scott is one of more than 84,000 people nationwide awaiting organ transplants. Having already grown by 350 percent over the past decade, this number is expected to continue to rise. The need for donations is increasing almost twice as fast as the supply. Given this growing disparity, we must explore new and creative ways to improve organ donation rates and give particular attention to the untapped resource of living donors.

Recently, Congress helped people such as Scott by passing legislation that included my idea to provide grants for hospitals and Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) to hire organ donor coordinators. Donor coordinators help patients and their families understand the donation process, facilitate the transportation of donated organs and increase community awareness of the need for organ donations. Hospitals with donor coordinators have vastly increased consent rates to organ donation compared with hospitals that do not have these coordinators.

Elaine Blom is an organ recipient whose post-transplant experience is a great example of the need for and true benefit of organ donations. Ten years have passed since Elaine's liver transplant, and during that time she has remarried, welcomed a new grandson into her life and even started a new career. While Elaine's example is one success story, there are many others. Sad to say, however, 17 people die every day waiting for a life-saving organ transplant -- a number that will rise as the demand increases.

Prospective donors can improve the process by discussing their intention to be an organ/tissue donor with their families. Listing organ donor on your driver's license is not enough. Although state law allows for "first person consent," which honors an individual's choice to donate, families still fulfill a pivotal role in providing the medical history that could affect the acceptability of the donated organs.

Individuals who wish to donate organs can also record their intentions in a registry, which alleviates the confusion that might result over who is a donor. Washington has taken the lead in coordinating donations by creating, along with Montana, the Living Legacy Registry. Still, no such national registry exists for organ donations, and several issues, including privacy concerns, must be addressed before one is established.

Living donations offer the greatest potential to help the growing number of people in need of a transplant. A living donor in good health can donate a kidney, part of a liver or bone marrow. For this to succeed, we need to assure living donors they will have access to affordable long-term health care and life insurance, will receive time off from work during the surgery and will be reimbursed for expenses relating to the process, such as travel. We must also consider the ethics of providing incentives for those who choose to make a living donation.

Finally, we must increase funding for research and invention of immunosuppressant drugs (ISDs), which are used post-operatively to help the body accept a transplanted organ. In particular, great investment must be made to research ISDs for children. Their bodies react very differently to ISDs than adults' bodies; simply reducing the adult dosage does not always work in children.

Organ donation is increasingly becoming one of the best and preferred means for recovery of diseases, so we can expect the demand for donations to proliferate in future years. We must continue to explore options that make the process easier for both prospective donors and recipients. I know that Scott and others like him will fully benefit from this gift -- from hiking, spending time with their families and enjoying an extension on life.