Why Donate?
Chair 2024 - 2025: Ian Aranyosi - Bayside Geelong - click here for email contact
Rotary District 9780 has been promoting Organ Donation Awareness since 2000.
- Rotary works with both LifeGift (Victorian Organ Donation Service) and Transplant Australia (Living Proof Transplantation Works) the largest support organization of its kind in the world with an aim for Australia to lead the world in making organ and tissue transplants available for all who need one - saving lives, minimizing suffering and providing care and support.
- The issue of organ and tissue donation personally touches the lives of many Australians, but as people continue to die on transplant waiting lists, it is vital that community understanding of the life-saving nature of organ and tissue donation is improved.
- Each organ donor can save or improve the life of up to ten people through life-saving transplant operations.
|
Time |
Waiting List |
|
Heart - lasts outside the body 2 to 4 hours |
1.1 years |
|
Lungs - 6 to 8 hours |
1.4 years |
|
Kidney - up to 24 hours |
4.4 years |
|
Liver - up to 10 hours |
10 months |
|
Pancreas - up to 12 hours |
Maybe days or even years! |
|
Corneas - 5 days |
5 months - Further information - 03 9929 8708 |
|
Heart valves, skin tissue |
Usually none - Bank Storage - Information 03 9684 4444 |
|
Bone marrow |
'Live procedure' - Information - 03 9694 0111 |
| Lungs - 6 to 8 hours |
1.4 years |
- In 2005 to strengthen the organ donation process, all Australian Governments agreed to the establishment of a National Consent Register.
- To date more than 710,000 Australians have registered their legal consent to become organ/ and or tissue donors - another 4.8 million Australians had previously recorded their intent to become donors.
- Totally this represents just under 30% of the Australian population.
- On average there are around 200 organ donors each year in Australia. During the same period there are approximately 2,000 people waiting for an organ transplant. Many of these people are seriously ill, and a transplant is their only viable option.
- An estimated 100 die each year while waiting for an organ transplant.
- Life on the list for some people can last for years and reduces people's quality of life dramatically. Kidney failure can mean up to 8 hours a day on a dialysis machine, heart and lung failure can leave people struggling to walk and liver failure tired, bloated and jaundiced.
- Only around 1% of all deaths occur in such a way that organ donation is possible.
- Organ donation can only occur once the wishes of the individual have been confirmed, usually in a hospital intensive care unit.
- Brain death occurs when the brain stops functioning with no prospect of recovery. It should not be confused with coma where a person is unconscious and may be capable of recovering.
- Australia has one of the highest transplant success rates, yet one of the lowest organ donor rates in the Western World.
- Family is central to the organ and tissue donation process and therefore all members of the community are encouraged to THINK about offering to become an organ and tissue donor TALK about it with family and friends and TELL their family of their decision.
- As Australians we are far more likely to require an organ transplant than ever become an organ donor.
- The Australian Organ Donor Register statistics are on the following website and are upgraded around the 26th or 27th of each month: http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/yourhealth/our_services/aaodr.htm .
- Further information on donors in each state of Australia may be obtained by contacting : http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/yourhealth/our_services/aodr/further_info.shtml
Please consider having on YOUR correspondence The Australian Organ Donor Register Toll Free 1800 777 203
Please support out-going major highway road signage wherever possible - 'Organ Donors Save Lives'