April 15, 2005

Realize the power of giving life through organ donation

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, currently there are 88,191 candidates on the waiting list for organ transplants. Every 14 minutes another person's name is added to the list who await lifesaving organ transplants, and every day 16 people in the United States die waiting for organ transplants. Jennifer Jackson, a 22-year-old from Vermont, was one of those candidates waiting for a double lung transplant until she died July 18, 2004. She spent approximately two and a half years on the waiting list.

Jackson suffered from a rare, genetically inherited condition that caused her lungs to function like an 80-year-old person. Her last 18 months were spent at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital awaiting two new lungs that would have been transplanted at the MGH under the direction of Leo Ginns, MD, director of the MGH Lung Transplant Program.

In November 2002, Jackson's condition became critical, and she was placed within the top 10 on the donor waiting list. Six months later, she was moved to the top five. But there were no matches, and the family began looking for a living donor. "It's very difficult to ask family and close friends to consider being a donor," says Mary Ann Gilbert, Jackson's mother. "And even with a large family, the chance that there is a match is very slim." Unfortunately for Jackson, two donors were not found in time.

Gilbert, who donated bone marrow for her brother when he needed a transplant, hopes to educate others about the importance of organ and tissue donation and the many misconceptions about being a donor.

To better inform and remind people about the importance of organ donation, April has been designated as Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Month. The hospital will recognize this important month April 25. An information table will be set up in the Main Corridor, from 8 am to 5 pm, and will feature a poster display, organ donation brochures and cards, and educational material for clinicians.

An educational seminar, "Realize the Power of Giving Life," will be held at noon in the O'Keeffe Auditorium and will highlight three perspectives about transplantation. Fredric Frigoletto, MD, chief of the MGH Division of Obstetrics and General Gynecology, will share his own personal transplant experience publicly for the first time; Jane Holtz, a former vice president and administrator at the MGH for
25 years, will share her family's organ donor story; and an MGH patient currently waiting for an organ donation also will put a face to the cause. Opening and closing remarks will be made by Jeanette Ives Erickson, RN, MS, senior vice president for Patient Care Services and chief nurse, and Peter L. Slavin, MD, president of the MGH.