Donation_For_Others

The Washington Times | Laura Sesana Photo: American Journal of Transplantation WASHINGTON, June 24, 2013 â€" A study published last week in the American Journal of Transplantation showed that Facebook’s addition of an organ donor option in the “life events” section of a user’s timeline boosted organ donation registration by 21 times the average daily rate. The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, gathered Facebook and online motor vehicle organ donation registration information from May 1, 2012, which was the day the Facebook campaign launched, to May 28, 2012. The researchers then compared the number of Facebook organ donor profile updates with organ registration data from 43 states and the District of Columbia. The study left out Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and West Virginia because data was unavailable.  The results were surprising. On the first day that Facebook allowed the information to show up on pro...

Philly.com  | Katheryne Lawrence No matter how the organs are distributed, organ donation in the United States is a win-lose equation. When one person on a waiting list receives a lung, another person who is also on that list does not. As of Tuesday June 25, 2013 at 1:59am, 75,945 people across the United States were on active waiting lists for organs. America has been rooting for 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan through her successful battle to receive a lung transplant. Throughout her struggle, the spotlight has been on the appropriateness of the rules for organ allocation. While those rules attempt to ensure fairness, they do not change the fact that there are not enough organs for everyone. Eighteen people die every day waiting on the list.  To solve this organ shortage crisis we need more organ donors. In the wake of Sarah’s story, many people have signed up. However, only about 45 percent of adults in the United States are registered organ donors. But simply registering wi...

Todays TNJ4 | By Shelley Walcott Almost one-million Americans need an organ transplant. Transplant experts are always looking for ways to improve the organ donation system, but the newest model is causing concern for some patients.  To see David Buggs today...you'd never know he had a liver transplant ten years ago. "I work everyday, my employers have been wonderful, let me work at home when I need to," he says. David waited only 6 months for that liver. Unfortunately, it's now failing, and he is on a waiting list once again. This time he's been waiting 2 1/2 years. He tells us what it's like to wait. "It's incredibly hard.  Every time that phone rings your heart skips a beat, because you're wondering whether there's a chance it might be your time." One of the reasons David has had to wait so long is that he IS doing so well. Transplant surgeon Dr. Christopher Johnson explains, "The patients that are sicker wait shorter."  In th...

LoHud.com | Richard Leibson Family and friends have a 'heart' for Frankie: Friends and family came together for a fundraising event at Hudson Park in New Rochelle for Frankie Rotellini, a New Rochelle city worker in need of a heart transplant. (Video by Seth Harrison/The Journal News) NEW ROCHELLE â€" Life was good for Frank Rotellini. A 38-year-old mechanic who works for the city of New Rochelle, Rotellini married Michele, a teacher, in September and a few months later the couple was happily making plans to start a family. Then “Frankie,” as his friends and family call him, started getting tired a lot. He ignored that for a while, but he began having trouble sleeping, he gained weight and his hands and feet began to swell. Two months ago, a medical examination revealed the worst: Rotellini was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a type of heart disease. Since then, he’s been in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, N.J., breathing throug...

OPTN: Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network Richmond, Va. - The OPTN/UNOS Board of Directors, meeting June 24 and 25, approved substantial amendments to OPTN policy for deceased donor kidney allocation. The policy will maintain access to kidney transplantation for all groups of candidates while seeking to improve outcomes for kidney transplant recipients, increase the years recipients may have a functioning transplant and increase utilization of available kidneys. The implementation date of the policy was not immediately established but is expected to occur in 2014. "These changes will result in better long-term kidney survival and more balanced waiting times for transplant candidates," said OPTN/UNOS President John Roberts, M.D. Matching to increase benefit and utilization More than 96,000 people are currently listed for kidney transplantation nationwide. About 10 percent of kidney candidates die each year while waiting. Because there are not enough kidneys donated...

NBC News | Linda Carroll Video: Ann and Ed Bartlinski already had eight children at home when they adopted Teresa, then 3, from China, who needed urgent help due to heart and lung issues. Teresa is now in “extremely critical” condition after a heart transplant last week, but her parents say she’s “a fighter.” NBC’s Tom Costello reports. It seemed like the perfect happy ending to an incredibly poignant story. Teresa Bartlinski, the 6-year-old adopted from China who literally had a broken heart, received a transplant after waiting for more than two years for a matching organ. But a few hours after the surgery last Monday Teresa went into cardiac arrest. She’s spent the last week on a heart-lung machine while doctors try to help her. Ed and Ann Bartlinski knew what they were getting into when they spotted Teresa at an orphanage in China. “Our whole intent was to bring her home, let her know the love of a family,” Ann told TODAY’s Tom Costello. “We knew she was termin...

ABC News | Sidney Lupkin Facebook may have provided a boost to organ donation in the United States since its donor registration button launched last year, but organs are still scarce, and about 18 people die every day as they wait on a transplant list, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But not all countries require that people who choose to donate organs register as organ donors at the Department of Motor Vehicles or online as we do here. Some countries have opt-out systems in which citizens are presumed organ donors unless they formally opt not to donate their organs when they die. Other countries even offer incentives such as payment for living kidney donations or preferred treatment for donors if they ever need to become a transplant recipient. United States Although there are more than 118,000 people on the organ transplant waiting list in the United States, only 8,143 underwent transplants from deceased donors in 2012, according to the Organ Procur...

Niagara This Week Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the excellent coverage you have brought for organ and tissue donation awareness! Your help in spreading the word that this really works is vital to all the people still on the waiting list, some of whom won’t survive long enough to receive their life saving gift. Adam Kingz is just one of many (44 in the Hamilton area alone!!!) who can be saved by a hero. Please understand that we never wish for someone else’s untimely death, just that they don’t waste the chance to turn their personal tragedy into someone else’s life saving miracle. I have a daughter who received a life saving liver transplant, but I am also the sister to two donors, one living, one deceased. I can tell you that it brings great comfort to know that something good came from my brother’s death. Since then I have been actively involved in raising awareness, including the highly successful “Go Green for Kayla Baker” campaign in Cambridge during Apr...

The Wall Street Journal  CENTENNIAL, Colo., June 19, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AlloSource, one of the nation's largest non-profit providers of skin, bone and soft tissue allografts for use in surgical procedures and the world's largest processor of cellular bone allografts announced today that it has become a Donate Life Partner. Through the new partnership with Donate Life America (DLA), AlloSource is investing in the great work that DLA does to increase the number of lives saved or healed through organ, eye and tissue donation and transplantation. Since its inception, DLA has provided more than $50 million to save and enhance lives through donation. As a Donate Life Partner, AlloSource will support DLA's network of national coalition partners in their efforts to motivate the American public to register as organ, eye and tissue donors. "AlloSource's decision to deepen our relationship with Donate Life America was natural since the company's mission to ho...

PRWEB Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights organization, is calling upon Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to adopt national standards prohibiting organ procurement staff from initiating organ donation discussions with individuals or family members before they have made a decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. The OPTN Board is scheduled to vote at its June 24-25 meeting on a policy allowing individual hospitals to set their own organ procurement standards regarding the timing of such discussions. Not Dead Yet , a national disability rights organization, is calling upon Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to adopt national standards prohibiting organ procurement staff from initiating organ donation discussions with individuals or family members before they have made a decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment. The OPTN Boa...

Al Monitor, The Pulse of the Middle East | By: Shlomi Eldar Photo: Roni Cohen, daughter of the late Efrat Cohen, is pictured with Malika Jama'in, who received her mother's kidney, at Soroka hospital. (photo by Beer Sheva Soroka Hospital) "If you look for a light at the end of the tunnel, you'll find it in Israeli hospitals," Zeev Rotstein, the director of Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer, once told me. "A bridge to peace is being built right before our eyes. Its foundations should no doubt run deeper and its columns be shored up. But the fact remains that hospital wards turn people who were just shy of death into lifelong ambassadors, ambassadors of coexistence." Indeed, in the corridors of Israeli hospitals, almost on a daily basis and away from the media, human stories are woven. Stories that can only be found there â€" on the fine line between life and death, where all preconceived notions, prejudice and hatred are set aside. Here are a few of the ...

WHNT | Robert Richardson DEKALB COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) â€" A Rainsville educator is getting to enjoy her summer break for the first time in years, thanks to a kidney donation from a stranger. DeKalb County Schools software specialist Paula Nance is no longer restricted by dialysis, and is planning a trip to visit south Alabama and Louisiana. “I’m going to be able to pack what I want and not have to worry about packing a trunk load of dialysis supplies. Since I did it at home, I had to carry all my stuff with me, and even at that, I still had to make sure I scheduled time for the dialysis, so I wasn’t still free when I went off somewhere to be able to do what I wanted to do all the time,” Nance said. They shared mutual friends, and Hughes heard Nance had been on a transplant list for several years but could not find a match. Many people got tested to see if they could be a living donor, and Hughes added Nance to her prayer list in the summer of 2012. “I saw her need and be...

NBC Latino | Kelly Carrion Joe Felix with the chain donation group and his two daughters. (Photo/ courtesy Joe Felix) A Los Angeles man, Joe Felix, was given an extraordinary gift just in time for Father’s Day. Felix received a kidney transplant from a complete stranger through a kidney donation chain program. “I had mixed feelings about this transplant, I didn’t want to get let down at the end, as it got closer, I saw this was actually going to happen, my appreciation grew,” says Felix. Felix had been suffering from kidney failure since he was 22 years old. He received a kidney transplant, from his brother that lasted him 13 years, but two years ago it began to fail him. His doctors told him the wait for a kidney transplant was seven to ten years with dialysis. Deanna Felix, Felix’s ex-wife, decided to donate her kidney to Felix, but was incompatible and unable to donate to him. “I was in an emotional state, I was devastated, it was hard to hear that you are looking at se...

The Sydney Morning Herald Grateful: Magistrate Brian Maloney now needs a liver. Photo: Jacky Ghossein The sun was shining, his beloved Sydney Roosters had flogged NRL grand finalists the Bulldogs 38-nil the night before, and magistrate Brian Maloney could not wipe the smile off his face. ''What a great day to have a heart transplant,'' he said as his wife drove him across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was Saturday, April 13, and he was on his way to St Vincent's Hospital. That morning, he had received a life-changing phone call: ''We have a possible donor, could you please come in sometime in the next two hours?'' He was there in just one. The phone call had floored the usually ebullient magistrate. ''My god. It's happenin now,'' was all he could think. ''You don't jump around like you've had a lotto win.'' His wife, Melody, the mother of his two young children, added: ''It was ...

The York Daily Record | Letter to the Editor As an emergency and trauma nurse for over 23 years, I have had the opportunity to be present in many situations surrounding death. Sharing the final life journey can expose our emotions and vulnerabilities. Several stories stick out in my memory, mainly accounts with young children and a strong family presence. I find it intriguing that when I think back at the "death moments" I clearly remember what family members were doing at the bedside, what they were wearing or saying, the tears. I recall going through journeys of grief with families -- holding hands, offering words of comfort and support, listening to stories and memories. I especially remember families who were nearing the final goodbye when they were actually laughing and recalling the good times. The peaceful goodbyes were often accompanied by the knowledge of the gift of organ donation. Knowing that the loved one's legacy could continue on through the ultimate gift o...

KPLC TV | Britney Glaser 18 people die each day waiting for transplants that cannot take place because of the shortage of donated organs. A nationally publicized legal battle this week over a Pennsylvania girl's lung transplant sparked a new debate over the waiting list and donation process. 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan's family won the legal battle victory to add her name to the list for an adult lung after 18 months of waiting, with cystic fibrosis destroying her lungs. "It was a direct result of the ruling that allowed her to be put on the adult list," said Sarah's aunt, Sharon Ruddock. "It was not pediatric lungs, she would've never have gotten these lungs otherwise." The organization that oversees national transplant policies has approved a one year change to make children under the age of 12 eligible to be put on the adult lung transplant list. That policy change is in effect until July 2014, then it will be reevaluated. On Wednesday, adult ...

Gift of Hope Blog Sarah Murnaghan has just weeks, or even days, to live unless she receives a lung transplant. Photo courtesy of ABC.com & Murnahan family Over the past week or two, the nation has become enthralled by the story of Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old with end-stage cystic fibrosis. Doctors say that Sarah has only weeks, or possibly days, to live unless she receives a lifesaving lung transplant. The images of Sarah are remarkably gripping as she lies with her friends and parents while on an oxygen machine. Our hearts truly go out to Sarah and her family. But, the story hasn’t necessarily been centered on Sarah and her wait; rather, news media have focused on the system for organ allocation that is established by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). OPTN guidelines for transplantation are extremely intricate and complex, but one area that has drawn particular attention has to do with the age of potential recipients. To make a long explanation short, ...

KGMB Hawaii | By Mileka Lincoln HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -Across the country, and here in Hawai'i, thousands of patients waiting for an organ transplant are anxiously watching an unfolding legal drama. For the second time in two days, a federal judge is allowing a child to go on an adult lung transplant waiting list, while also keeping a priority spot on the pediatric list. There are two waiting lists for lung transplants â€" one for children under 12, and one for everyone else. Kids usually wait longer for transplants because there are fewer organs available and until now, they haven't been allowed on the adult waiting lists. But the recent rulings concern local medical experts who believe the judge's order will set a risky precedent. They say these decisions shouldn't be made by the courts, but by doctors. "The sad fact is there are not enough organs for all that are waiting. People die waiting for organ transplant," explained Felicia Wells-Williams,...

MSNBC |  Michael Smerconish Let me finish tonight with this. In a week of NSA and DNA and MLB, a 10-year-old girl has captured national and world attention. Sarah Murnaghan is dying of end-stage cystic fibrosis in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She has been waiting for lung transplant for a year and a half. Now, she has weeks to live â€" if that. The issue? To be eligible for an adult lung you have to be 12 years old and Sarah is only 10, so she’s been waiting for a transplant from a pediatric donor â€" of which there are few. Her parents appealed, requesting Sarah be placed on the adult lung transplant list. That appeal was declined, and an online petition was launched calling for that policy to change and for federal officials to make an “exceptional ruling” on behalf of the child. Sadly, this story has become political with Kathleen Sebelius at center of storm. Secretary Sebelius called the case “agonizing” but said she could not interfere with the...

The Philly Post | Sandy Hingston I don’t have a critically ill child, and I don’t usually read articles about people who do. It’s not that I’m heartless. It’s just that nothing points up the unbearable unfairness of life like a sick child. I’m sure that Sarah Murnaghan, the 10-year-old with cystic fibrosis who’s been in the news of late because the arcane rules of transplant lists made her ineligible for a transplant of more readily available (though still mighty scarce) grown-up lungs, is a great kid. Just about all kids are great kids. And it sucks, it really sucks, that kids get sick and sometimes die. But Sarah’s family mounted a massive publicity campaign to rally the public and the media to push for an exception, in her case, to the rules set by medical experts on how donated organs are allotted. Daily News columnist Ronnie Polaneczky covered the case, and added her voice to a growing clamor: “Changing policy takes time,” she wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretar...

The Patriot Post | Mona Charen If I were the parent of a child who might be kept alive -- if only for a few more years -- by a lung transplant, I too would move Heaven and Earth to get it done. That the parents of 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan have made her an Internet and cable news celebrity in a desperate effort to get her on the adult list for a lung transplant is completely understandable. No one with a particle of human sympathy can fail to be moved by the family's situation. The story, however, has loosed a torrent of demagoguery -- some of it coming from the very people who should be most alarmed about the politicization of cases like Sarah's and of health care generally. Talk radio and TV have been ringing with strident and even hysterical accusations that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is "letting this little girl die," or "choosing who will live and who will die." Some are linking Sebelius's supposed callousness to the terrible, politicized rat...

USA News Today | Nanci Hellmich Deciding who gets transplants is a complex medical issue that should be decided by transplant experts, not the courts or members of Congress, experts say. There are almost 1,700 people in this country on the waiting list for a lung transplant, including 31 children under age 11, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. But none captured the public's attention like the case of Sarah Murnaghan, age 10, who suffers from end-stage cystic fibrosis. Her prospects looked poor because organ transplant rules don't allow adult lungs to go to children under 12. But on Wednesday night a judge ordered the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to add her to the list for adult lungs. So she's now on that list as well as a priority list for organs from a pediatric donor. The ruling only applies to Sarah who is at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Many more adult lungs than children's lungs are donated. Matches are ba...

WSFA  A Mid-South family helped potentially save hundreds of lives all because of one conversation. (KAIT) - Every day across the country, lives are changed by someone's simple decision to donate their tissue and organs. A Mid-South family helped potentially save hundreds of lives all because of one conversation. "We fell in love and were married in 2003," said Rachel Marler. "Bob was very giving. He was always happy." Bob and Rachel Marler welcomed a daughter named Riley first to the family, and then a son named Clint. Bob worked in farming, and Rachel worked to help the underprivileged and disabled find financial assistance. But life on the fast track for this Poplar Bluff family came to a stop. Bob, who liked to hunt, was accidentally shot in the back of the neck by a friend while duck hunting on New Year's Eve last year. He was airlifted to a Cape Girardeau hospital. "He got up and left and went that morning. About 9 o'clock and I got the news t...

The National Review | Yuval Levin In the past few days, some members of Congress (mostly Republicans) have been pressing HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius to intervene on behalf of a little girl named Sarah Murnaghan, who is suffering from cystic fibrosis and awaiting a lung transplant at a Pennsylvania hospital. Because she is under 12 years old (she is 10), she is on the children’s waiting list, and so is not eligible for adult donor lungs â€" which become available much more frequently than those of children. At a hearing yesterday and in various venues today, Sebelius has been pressed to use her (vaguely defined) discretion to bend the rules of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and get Murnaghan on the adult list, where she would have a better chance of getting a lung before it’s too late. Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania yesterday pushed Sebelius directly, telling her, “I’m begging you, Sarah has three to five weeks to live. Time is running ou...