April is National Donate Life Month, a calendar observance to most of us but a potentially life-saving awareness push for others.
You may not be aware, for instance, that 17 people die each day in the U.S. waiting for an organ donation. Or that every eight minutes, another person in our country is added to the transplant list. Right now, there are more than 100,000 patients nationwide waiting for a transplant.
The good news is that more than 46,000 transplants were performed in 2023 and more than 1 million recipients are alive today because of a transplant.
An impressive 170 million people have registered their decision to be donors at the end of life to help others ‒ but that’s not enough. The variations in genetics that make us all different require an even larger pool of donors to help check off that transplant waiting list and make a dent in that 17 deaths-per-day statistic.
So, if you haven’t already, consider giving the gift of life as a going-away present to humanity. When you register to be an organ donor, appropriate organs are surgically removed from your body shortly after your life has concluded and carefully transported to hospitals where recipients can utilize them to sustain their own lives.
You won’t feel a thing, and your kidney, liver, heart or lungs will allow someone else to enjoy the feelings of life for much longer. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, every donor can save up to eight lives and enhance 75 more.
And, please know that you are never too old to donate! One man gave the gift of life ‒ his liver ‒ when he was 95 years old.
Signing up as an organ donor is a relatively easy process. There are three ways to register:
- Sign up online at registerme.org. You may need your driver’s license/ID number to fill out a form.
- Visit your local motor vehicle office.
- Sign up through the Health app on your iPhone. Your information is sent to a national computer system.
This Donate Life Month, make April 2024 the most important month for someone else. Sign up to be an organ donor, and feel the satisfaction of knowing that one day in the distant future you will give the gift of life to someone desperate for a future of their own.
