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Author Topic: 'My Facebook plea for kidney changed rules and now it’s saved my life'  (Read 2469 times)

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Offline Clark

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http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/my-facebook-plea-for-kidney-changed-rules-and-now-its-saved-my-life-9651233.html

'My Facebook plea for kidney changed rules and now it’s saved my life'
SOPHIE GOODCHILD

A mother who made organ donation easier for thousands after using Facebook to find a kidney is celebrating after recovering from a successful transplant.

Karen Brown, 42, helped persuade health regulators to issue guidance for stranger-to-stranger donations,  especially over the internet.

She said today she has been “given her life back” after her operation at St George’s Hospital in south-west  London in April.

Mother-of-two Ms Brown took to social media after she was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2011. Businesswoman Gemma Coles, 35, read her plea for “a hero”’ and offered to donate one of her kidneys. But rules at the time said only friends or family members could officially donate a kidney for Ms Brown.

This meant Ms Coles and Ms Brown — or anyone else who did not know each other —  would need to wait for individual approval.

The two women wrote to the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) asking for help and it has since issued guidance to transplant units making it easier for strangers to make “living”’ donations.

Ms Brown told the Standard: “We fought for this and it opens up new possibilities for people in desperate need of a transplant. I was told we could just use friends and family as donors — they obviously didn’t expect me to use Facebook.

“Because I’d not met Gemma they wouldn’t officially allow her donation. We thought that can’t be right ... it wasn’t like money was changing hands. So we wrote to the HTA and eventually the guidelines were changed. I feel I’ve got my life back now for my kids.”

It turned out Ms Brown, from Sussex, and Ms Coles, from Cambridge,  were not actually a close enough match for a transplant. But another kidney became available from a donor.

The two women have developed a close friendship and will meet for the first time this Friday. Ms Coles, also a mother-of-two, is still searching for someone to donate her kidney to.

She said: “I offered to donate with the objective of finding someone to give the gift of life to, and I ended up finding a very special lady who has indeed been given the gift of life. While Karen hasn’t been my recipient, we both believe we have got so much out of our friendship.

“We are there for one another for support as a true friend would be, despite having met via the internet.” The HTA said it assessed every living organ donation case to ensure risks are understood, and it had issued new guidelines for donors and recipients “as we saw the rise in the use of social media”.
Unrelated directed kidney donor in 2003, recipient and I both well.
620 time blood and platelet donor since 1976 and still giving!
Elected to the OPTN/UNOS Boards of Directors & Executive, Kidney Transplantation, and Ad Hoc Public Solicitation of Organ Donors Committees, 2005-2011
Proud grandpa!

 

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