Med Center Health Raises the Banner for Organ Donation During National Donate Life Month

National Donate Life Month has been observed each April since 2003. Its goal is to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation while also offering an opportunity to recognize people who have saved lives by becoming donors.

Every day, 17 individuals die while waiting for an organ transplant, with another person added to the list every eight minutes.

More than 33,000 Americans will receive life-saving organ transplants in 2023, while more than 100,000 people remain on the national transplant waiting list.

More than a thousand people in Kentucky are waiting for organs. Leslie Rossetter, Director of Medical Services at Med Center Health, explained that there are two ways a person might donate. “There’s organ donation, where brain death criteria are met,” she went on to say. “You’re able to donate your heart and your lungs, and liver and kidney, and lots of different other things, just depending on your clinical condition”.

The second option is to donate tissue, which can be obtained after a person’s death and includes the cornea, ligaments, and skin.

“When you think about burn victims, those are your life-enhancing donations, and so athletes with their tendons and ligaments and burn victims with the skin and tissue, cancer patients that would potentially get bone, all of those are things that you can donate after death,” Rossetter went on to say.

However, while 90% of persons in the United States support organ donation, only approximately 60% donate. “We have lots of people across the US that are waiting for organs,” Rossetter said in an interview. “Time is valuable, and we are waiting for it. So it is critical that anybody eligible donate to save or improve the lives of others.”