MEMBER for Mallee Anne Webster’s push for organ and tissue donation is personal – it saved her granddaughter’s life.
Dr Webster is urging Mallee residents to register to help more individuals who require life-saving transplants, as part of DonateLife Week
Organ donors can save up to seven lives and help many more through eye and tissue donations.
“An organ transplant doesn’t just save lives, it gives families back their mother, father, sibling, or child or grand child,” Dr Webster said.
“I have experienced first hand the gift of organ donation when my granddaughter received a life saving liver transplant as a young child.”
According to data, about 4100 people (or 22 per cent) in the Swan Hill local government area population are on the organ donation register.
There are currently about 1750 seriously ill people on Australia’s organ transplant waitlist hoping for a potentially life saving operation, but Australia does not have enough registered organ and tissue donors to ensure they’ll get the help.
There are also an additional 13,000 people on dialysis who may benefit from a kidney transplant.
The number of people who received a transplant last year was 7 per cent down on 2020, while the number of Australians who registered as organ and tissue donors dropped by 9 per cent last year.
Research shows that four in five Australians support donation, yet there are around 13 million Australians aged 16+ who are eligible to register as organ and tissue donors, but haven’t.
A recent YouGov poll of 1000 Australians found the key barrier to signing up is that most don’t know how to register.
Dr Webster advised locals to talk to friends, family, colleagues and sporting or community group about registering as an organ and tissue donor.
“It only takes one minute online at donatelife.gov.au or just three taps in your Medicare Express Plus app,” she said.
Dr Webster pushed for organ donation awareness during her maiden speech in Parliament in 2019, after a liver transplant saved her granddaughter Emmeline’s life.
Emmeline was born with a liver abnormality and her family was told she would not survive without a transplant.
Dr Webster said the months waiting for an organ to become available for the then 14-month-old were “torturous and agonising, to say at the least”.
Today, Emmeline is thriving and her personal experience prompted Dr Webster to help establish a parliamentary friends group for organ donation with the support of co-chair Labor MP Mike Freelander.
“We are incredibly grateful to the family who allowed for their loved one to give their organ, I don’t know whether they had other organs they also gave, but for our little granddaughter it meant life,” she said.
“It is extraordinary and such a gift.”
Dr Webster said she believed people were not aware of the opportunity to become an organ and tissue donor, as well as how to sign up.
“I became an organ donor myself when I became aware of the need,” she said.
“Donate Life is the organisation in Australia that assists people to sign up for that process and I would really love everyone to get on board that.
“I am encouraging people to sign up to become an organ donor.
“It is also really important that people who sign up let their family know.
“Obviously should anything horrific happen then families need to know that was the wish of their loved one.”
