Transplant outrage has a solution: more organ donors
NBC NEWS | JoNel Aleccia, Senior Writer, NBC News
As soon as word spread that little Sarah Murnaghan needed a lung transplant, the offers started rolling in.
Not from the families of deceased donors who might save the life of the 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl with cystic fibrosis, but from concerned strangers who saw or heard the child’s plight in national news stories and wanted to do something -- anything -- they could.
“I was looking at her picture and that just touched my heart and I got tears,†said Daniel Barr, 60, an ex-Marine from Cecil, Ark., who offered to volunteer his own lung for Sarah. “I just wanted to jump up and say, ‘Here, take it!’â€
Hundreds of people shared Barr’s sentiment, even though the girl’s family said that she wasn’t suitable for a living lung donation. What many may not have shared is Barr’s longtime designation as an organ donor -- and not just for Sarah.
“I’ve been one just about forever,†said Barr, who lost his own daughter, Kelly Nichole, in 1991, and donated her heart and eyes. “I wish more people would. You could really cut the backlog of people waiting â€" and dying.â€
Only about 45 percent of adults in the U.S. -- nearly 109 million people -- are organ donors, a figure that donation and transplant experts say seems tragically low when the public’s attention is riveted on the lack of organs for a child such as Sarah.
“We have millions of people that are concerned or outraged about this particular situation, yet 55 percent don’t sign up to donate,†said David Fleming, the president and chief executive of Donate Life America, a transplant advocacy agency that tracks U.S. donors.
Not from the families of deceased donors who might save the life of the 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl with cystic fibrosis, but from concerned strangers who saw or heard the child’s plight in national news stories and wanted to do something -- anything -- they could.
“I was looking at her picture and that just touched my heart and I got tears,†said Daniel Barr, 60, an ex-Marine from Cecil, Ark., who offered to volunteer his own lung for Sarah. “I just wanted to jump up and say, ‘Here, take it!’â€
Hundreds of people shared Barr’s sentiment, even though the girl’s family said that she wasn’t suitable for a living lung donation. What many may not have shared is Barr’s longtime designation as an organ donor -- and not just for Sarah.
“I’ve been one just about forever,†said Barr, who lost his own daughter, Kelly Nichole, in 1991, and donated her heart and eyes. “I wish more people would. You could really cut the backlog of people waiting â€" and dying.â€
Only about 45 percent of adults in the U.S. -- nearly 109 million people -- are organ donors, a figure that donation and transplant experts say seems tragically low when the public’s attention is riveted on the lack of organs for a child such as Sarah.
“We have millions of people that are concerned or outraged about this particular situation, yet 55 percent don’t sign up to donate,†said David Fleming, the president and chief executive of Donate Life America, a transplant advocacy agency that tracks U.S. donors.
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"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net
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