Looking to youth to boost organ donation

Looking to youth to boost organ donation

LISA PRIEST

November 22, 2008

Caitlin McClure was only 11 when she came back from the local grocery store, keen to fill out the organ-donor card she had brought home. A conversation with her parents that began at the kitchen table ended with her signing it, the printing in teal marker characteristic of a child.

Five years later, in 2005, she developed a blinding headache and collapsed on the bus she was riding to a Christmas party. A cerebral hemorrhage caused by a tangle of abnormal and poorly formed blood vessels in her brain, medically known as arteriovenous malformation, would cause irreversible brain damage.

When it became clear that the Grade 11 Coquitlam, B.C., student would not recover, her parents, Andrew and Mary McClure, received a visit from B.C. Transplant officials. They wanted to confirm Ms. McClure's desire to donate her organs.

"They said: 'We've got this card your daughter signed, it's got children's writing on it,' " recalled Andrew McClure of his talk with hospital officials. "They wanted to make sure that it was in keeping with what the family wanted."
Print Edition - Section Front

Section A Front Enlarge Image
More National Stories

* Man makes tearful plea for expenses as wife awaits transplant
* Vancouver Games to face money hurdles, CEO says
* Defence ministers confident Afghan elections can go ahead
* Looking to youth to boost organ donation
* Online messages detail plot to kill girl's family
* Military hopes hard times mean more recruits
* Go to the National section

The Globe and Mail

One person received Caitlin's lungs; another her liver. Two people each received a kidney. Two others, including a young mother, received her corneas, regaining their sight in the process.

Recognizing young people are an important group to tap into, Canadian Blood Services, which has been charged with the task of starting a national system to boost organ donation and life-saving transplants, is looking to increase its pool of younger donors.

"We agree that that's a key fertile ground," said Peter Nickerson, executive medical director for transplantation for Canadian Blood Services. "We should be talking about organ donation early; there shouldn't be a big mystery about it."

Indeed, the CBS plans to draw on its "relatively good success" in recruiting young people as blood and stem-cell donors by broadening out to organ and tissue donation, said Ron Vezina, its director of media relations, who added that "youth is a very important segment for us."

Going to young people - instead of their parents first - is a strategy thought to be particularly fruitful, given that high-school students are at one of the most thoughtful, idealistic times in their lives. Ontario, for example, rolled out in September a pilot project to Grade 11 students at 240 schools, aimed at educating them about organ and tissue donation.

"If you think about recycling, if you think about environmental issues, a lot of us came to that through the influence of our kids," said Frank Markel, president and chief executive officer of Trillium Gift of Life Network, the agency that oversees organ and tissue donations in Ontario. He stressed the information is provided in an objective way to students.

It's similar to the movement in the United States, where a national initiative to increase organ, tissue marrow and blood donation by high-school and university students has been carried out through the Donate Life program.

"There is a great deal of effort expended to educate new drivers in the United States, teens under 18, and it is working," David Fleming, executive director of Donate Life America, wrote in an e-mail. He estimated as many as 19.5-million people under age 18 were registered on electronic databases.

No Canadian figures exist on how many young people have signed organ-donor cards or have listed themselves on intent-to-donate registries.

In Ontario, 30,000 people aged 16 to 18 have registered their intent to donate their organs, according to figures provided by Andrew Morrison, spokesman for the province's Health Ministry. (Only names of those aged 16 and up are gathered).

In B.C., where Ms. McClure donated her organs, 100,000 people on its online registry are 19 years or younger, including 38,000 who are aged nine years and younger, according to B.C. Transplant executive director Bill Barrable. Unlike Ontario, a parent or guardian must co-sign the card of a person under the age of 19.

As the only province that allows patients to register their wishes online, B.C. has 700,000 who have registered, 99 per cent of them having consented to donating their organs, Mr. Barrable said. He said names of donors are available through a secure Web browser 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from all acute-care hospitals in British Columbia that have password-protected access.

"Once you are registered, you are registered for life," he said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. "The registry is effective at providing support to family, especially involving the death of a child."

From Jan. 1 to June 30, this year, 81 organs were retrieved from deceased young people under age 18, according to the Canadian Organ Replacement Register. The remaining 780 retrieved organs were from adults during that same time period.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081122.DONOR22/TPStory/National