About half of us are carrying a driver's licence that says we are a "donor". It means that if we die we have given permission for our organs to be taken for a transplant to someone needing a healthy replacement. It was a big decision, even if the licence was issued long ago and we have not given it much thought since.
It is a brave person who does not pause before ticking the box to be a donor. It takes a moment to remind yourself that if ever the situation arose, you would be past caring. And another moment to imagine your heart perhaps giving somebody a new lease on life. Somebody such as David Rasmussen, who is featured in the Herald on Sunday today. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at donors' decisions, what happens thereafter and the waiting lists for more donors.
Although as many as half the drivers in New Zealand have stated their willingness to donate organs, we have one of the lowest rates of actual organ donation in the developed world. Our rate is half that of Australia's. Something in our system is not working.
The obvious reason that so few willing donors become actual donors is that the decision cannot be made until the donor has been declared brain dead in a hospital intensive care unit. At that point the donor's family are given the right to decide. They need to decide quickly while the organs are still useful and in their grief and stress the idea of allowing tissue to be taken from their loved one's body must be often too hard.
A government review into our low donation rate is under way. Its terms of reference have yet to be finalised but it seems unlikely to question our physicians' wish to let families have the final decision. Those running the system, Organ Donation NZ, do not question this policy. In fact they suggest we rank low on donation rates because some countries have ethically questionable methods.
