Living Donors Online Message Board
Living Donation Discussion and News => Living Donation in the News => Topic started by: Clark on September 27, 2011, 07:20:55 AM
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http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/2transp-2/Article/
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IF the campaigns over the past two decades are anything to go by, Malaysians are not very receptive to the concept of recycling. Though efforts have been made to get consumers to separate paper from plastic and glass, the public seems largely to not care that recycling could save Mother Earth.
So, it can hardly be surprising that the concept of altruistic organ donation is not popular here. The carelessness that does not drive the recycling of consumer products does not drive the will to recycle human organs for the sake of humanity either. Of the more than 28 million Malaysians, only 0.64 per cent have pledged their organs for the greater human good after their death.
When compared with the number of people who are waiting for a transplant (13,950), the 0.64 per cent of donors sounds like plenty enough already. But organ transplantation has many permutations to complicate matters. If it is a cadaveric donation, the donor has to die in not-too-traumatic a manner, otherwise, the organs are ruined; the person has to be delivered to a hospital quickly so that the organs can be harvested; a proper match has to be found; and, then, the donor's family has to agree to respect the donor's pledge. And all this does not even take into account whether the donor was young and healthy enough for his organs to be of any good to anyone else. Taken in this context, 0.64 per cent is far too small a pool.
If the state is loath to institute a system by which people have to opt out of donating (as opposed to the current system of opting in), at the very least it should consider putting in place a mandated system, by which people would have to consciously choose whether or not to pledge. This would make people think beyond their own lives and their own mortality. The more pledges that are made, the more cadaveric organs that can be harvested, and the less the need for living donors.
And, if we are to condone living donations, there should be proper procedures for it. There should be a registry of live organ donors to keep track of their well-being after the transplant; and insurance companies must be compelled to issue supportive policies to living organ donors.
And, the current "guideline" of not allowing transplants between unrelated people must be made into law, so that it cannot result in the commercialisation of transplantation.
To donate or not to donate is largely an individual choice, but creating a culture of pledging starts with showing that we care about those who give as much as we care about those who receive.