‘Health is one of those things we can donate’

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This article was published 13/12/2017 (2325 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While a new report shows the Prairies are lagging behind national numbers, close to 4,000 Manitobans have registered this year to become potential organ donors.

Data published Thursday by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and Canadian Blood Services shows there were 12.1 deceased organ donors for every million people in Manitoba and 12.1 in Saskatchewan in 2016. The rate throughout Canada was 20.9. Between Manitoba and Saskatchewan’s combined 2016 numbers, the rate of living donors is two short of the national count per million.

“Across Manitoba, there have been multiple transplants this year,” said Faisal Siddiqui, an organ donor physician with Transplant Manitoba.

“The final numbers still haven’t been counted for all of December, but this may be one of the years that we had significant increase in the number of recipients, as well as the number of donations, more so than in previous years.”

Siddiqui said nearly 22,000 Manitobans have signed up on Transplant Manitoba’s registry to express their intent to donate an organ (signupforlife.ca).

He said slightly fewer than 4,000 people have registered in 2017.

The number of deceased organ donors in Canada has increased 42 per cent over the past 10 years, while the number of living organ donors has decreased 11 per cent, a CIHI news release said.

The deceased donor increase is a result of a rising number of donations from patients whose hearts stopped beating and whose brains lost all function, the CIHI said.

Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have the highest deceased donation rates in Canada. The provinces with the highest number of living organ donors are British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

“Manitobans are giving people. We tend to rank high when we talk about donations from a monetary perspective to charities,” Siddiqui said.

“Health is one of those things we can donate.”

The physician attributes the rise in potential donors this year to Transplant Manitoba’s awareness campaigns and the decision to move away from issuing blue-coloured organ-donor cards, making the website the focal point of donor registration.

After registering, providing a health-card number, name and birth date, a Manitoban’s donation decision is recorded in a Manitoba Health database. Transplant Manitoba donation team members will share a patient’s decision with their family in the event of death or imminent death.

“It’s not the kind of conversation that most people want to have at the dinner table, but it is something that comes up, unfortunately, at horrible times in a person’s life, when a loved one is fallen quickly ill and is near the end of their life,” Siddiqui said.

He said Transplant Manitoba has been working to make sure that conversation happens more frequently among friends and family, so wishes are known before a potential transplant decision has to be made.

Cathy Omeniuk of Winnipeg and all three of her children are potential organ donors.

Her husband, Dean Omeniuk, has had two heart transplants from deceased donors in the past 20 years.

In Canada, she said, donors and recipients aren’t allowed to communicate except via anonymous letters. She’s written letters to her husband’s donors’ families, but has never heard back.

“I was completely grateful that (the donors) gave my husband the chance to grow up with his kids, to spend more time with us, that they gave such a wonderful gift at such a horrible time in their life,” she said on Wednesday.

Omeniuk and her husband took an air ambulance to Edmonton in the spring for his latest transplant.

Patients who need heart, lung or liver transplants have to travel out of province, but kidney transplants are done in Manitoba, said Roberta Koscielny of Transplant Manitoba.

Siddiqui said kidneys are the most transplanted organ in Canada.

“Currently there are about 200 Manitobans waiting for a kidney transplant and another 30 waiting for heart, lung or liver,” Koscielny said in a statement.

CIHI said 387 Manitobans were waiting for a kidney transplant at the end of 2016.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca