Page 3579 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 September 1990
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MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: The discussion is concluded.
ORGAN DONOR NOTIFICATION SCHEME
Ministerial Statement
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.06), by leave: With the Legislative Assembly's leave I would like to inform members about the new ACT organ donor notification scheme which I will be launching tomorrow. Transplantation offers life, sight and hope to thousands of Australians. The success of organ transplantation, particularly over recent years, has led to an increasing demand for donor organs. Transplantation is now a highly accepted treatment for many forms of life threatening organ disease.
Some national statistics assist in understanding the magnitude of success now achieved with transplants for many Australians. In Australia there are some 3,000 people with functioning kidney transplants and 200 people have received liver transplants in the past five years. All of these people would have died without the transplant. Approximately 120 people have received heart transplants. Many thousands of Australians have had cornea transplants.
However, the number of people having transplants of one kind or another is restricted, due to the shortage of donor organs. Many people die before a suitable donor organ can be located. Many of these are children. The waiting time for kidney transplantation is some 18 months. A thousand people are on this waiting list. Twenty per cent of people waiting for heart transplants die before a suitable donor heart can be found.
Mr Deputy Speaker, there are many reasons as to why donor organs have been scarce in this country. Community attitudes regarding the removal of organs have taken a very long time to change. This is, I think, understandable. When you lose a loved one, especially if it comes unexpectedly, it is hard to be also confronted with having to make a decision on a request for organ donation. The grief and shock of loss is great and the speed with which medical intervention has to take place to retrieve an organ makes a request seem unnecessarily intrusive.
By the time a grieving next of kin is able to contemplate the request, the opportunity to retrieve an organ to save someone else's life or sight has often passed.
These difficulties can be alleviated considerably if people take the opportunity to discuss their wishes with their relatives before they die and if they can leave a legal document to advise their next of kin and medical authorities about their desire to donate their organs. An organ donation notification scheme can help to overcome the
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