UK ministers step up organ donor shortfall campaign

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/29/organ-donor-shortfall-campaign

Version 0 of 1.

Britons using universal credit and state pensions websites will soon be prompted to consider joining the organ donor register as ministers step up a drive to increase the pool of potentially life-saving organs available to surgeons for transplant.

Cabinet office minister Grant Shapps said there were “three needless deaths a day” because of continuing organ shortages. He is seeking to at least double the 20.8 million Britons – roughly a third of the population – on the register. There are about 7,000 people on the transplant waiting list, 4,000 of whom have spent their second Christmas waiting for a donor organ.

Numbers of people needing transplants are also expected to rise steeply over the next decade both because of the ageing population and scientific advances helping make more people able to benefit from transplants.

Age is no barrier to becoming donors, ministers insist, saying that people in their 70s and 80s have become donors and saved lives.

Pledging extensions to “nudge” tactics already employed by several government bodies, Shapps also urged big private companies dealing online with the public to follow the example of Boots, which invites those signing up for its Advantage card scheme to opt in to organ donation.

The minister said David Cameron, the prime minister, was fully behind his drive to ensure all government departments were involved, with civil servants being encouraged to join the donor register too.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) began prompting those renewing their driving licences on application forms more than 20 years ago and leaflets have been sent out with passport application details since 1996.

The DVLA also pioneered nudging visitors to its website for car tax payments and licence renewals to consider organ donation, adding 830,000 people to the register in the last two years. Research into the language and visual prompts that provoked the most positive results found the best-performing message asked people: “If you needed an organ transplant, would you have one? If so please help others” .

Gov.UK sites for passport applications, registering to vote, and practical driving tests as well as those for Transport for London’s Oyster cards and contactless payments are among those that now offer the option of joining the organ donation register.

But Shapps said more needed to be done. “I am calling on large companies with a sense of corporate responsibility, PLCs with big customer bases, to join in the fight. There is no downside to this, being on the register. You don’t need the organs afterwards …We want at least 60%, two-thirds of people, on the register and then we will be in a much better place than we are today.”

He said he wanted to stick to a voluntary opt-in system rather than moving to an assumption that a person’s organs are available to be used unless they state otherwise.

Despite the apparently large numbers already promising donation after death, only about 5,000 people annually die in circumstances where organs can be transplanted – in hospital, on a ventilator, and in intensive care or the emergency department.

However, organs from one donor can benefit up to nine different people and more can be helped through using their tissues.

NHS Blood and Transplant has been urging transplant staff to take a firmer, while still polite, line with families who seek to override the wishes of loved ones who have died while on the register. Some bereaved relatives are not even aware of the dead person’s wishes so online campaigns, including over the current holiday period, will encourage families to have conversations on the issue.