One way of nurturing a genuine culture of life is, certainly, the donation of body organs with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who, sometimes, have no other hope. Indeed, donating organs, like donating blood, is a great act of generosity and solidarity that involves the deepest aspects of the human personality.
It was therefore good to learn, during the recent first national conference on organ donation and transplantation organised by the Transplant Support Group (Malta), that 94 per cent of respondents in a study said they had heard about organ donation and what it means and that 69 per cent agreed to donate their organs upon death.
This confirms attitudes towards organ donation are becoming ever more positive even if 15 per cent of participants in the survey said they were undecided on whether to donate their organs upon death, worried doctors might “dismember” their body in the process.
The noble gesture of organ donation is not just a matter of giving away something that belongs to us but of giving something of ourselves. Accordingly, an immediate consequence of big import presents itself: the need for full correct information.
People should be properly informed about the processes involved in order to be in a position to consent or decline in a free and conscientious manner. This applies not only to the consent of individual donors but also of relatives in the absence of a decision on the part of the donor.
In this regard, it is positive to hear of the plans to introduce a living will system whereby doctors would be able to administer certain medical procedures – including the removal of body organs upon death – when patients are incapacitated or medically unconscious to make or air their own decision. This would mean that one’s decision to offer without reward a part of one’s own body, after death, for the health and well-being of another person is officially registered. It would also remove the prevailing situation whereby relatives can revoke a decision of a deceased family member to donate body organs. This will ensure a donor’s wish is invariably respected after death.
In this regard, a document drawn up by the Health Ministry’s Bioethics Committee on organ donation should be published soonest even as organ donation legislation is being drafted.
Transplants are a great scientific step forward in the service of man. Thanks to the work of generous and highly-trained people, scientific and technological research continues to progress. Not a few people today owe their lives to an organ transplant. In Malta alone, one person a year has a heart transplant, 12 a kidney transplant – three of them from live donors – and 14 a cornea transplant.
The technique of transplants has increasingly proven to be a valid means of attaining the primary goal of all medicine, that of being of service to human life. Nonetheless, notwithstanding all the efforts to promote the practice of organ donation, the resources available in various sectors are often insufficient to meet medical needs.
Social, political, religious and educational leaders must renew their commitment to foster such a genuine culture of generosity and solidarity. And society should strive to further instil in people’s hearts, especially in the hearts of the young, a genuine and deep appreciation of the need for brotherly love that can find expression in the decision to become an organ donor. After all, one can be a donor today and a beneficiary tomorrow.