New ID cards are likely to indicate whether the holder consents to organ donation, according to the Transplant Support Group that has been lobbying for this over the past year.
The group was confident this would happen by the end of 2012, the group’s vice-president and live donor James Muscat said.
The move was considered important “because the ID card is an official document while a donor card merely expresses an individual’s wish”, he said.
It would mean medics would have immediate knowledge of a person’s consent for organ donation because the details would be readily available on a data base.
“We have spoken to the government and the opposition, the President and the Health Minister and they have all expressed full support for this initiative,” Mr Muscat said, adding that such a measure would have to go through Parliament first.
There have only been three cases of unrelated living kidney donations
His own personal initiative is to encourage more living donors to come forward, an issue recently cast into the spotlight when a woman placed an online advert for a kidney for her son’s father, offering €5,000 in compensation.
For Mr Muscat, “it is most definitely wrong to involve money and the ethical issue is the topmost priority in any case of living transplantation, particularly if the proposed donation is unrelated”.
In Malta, there have only been three cases of unrelated living kidney donations and Mr Muscat’s was the first eight years ago.
The drive to support renal patients and raise awareness about organ donation and transplantation was not hindered by yesterday’s inclement weather and about 100 participants turned up to walk from Sliema to Valletta to show solidarity for the cause.
Among those who braved strong winds and grey skies were kidney donors and recipients, patients on dialysis, a renal nurse and even a blind man, accompanied by his guide dog.
Everyone had a story to tell. A group of participants from Studioseven were walking in support of their colleague, who had undergone a successful transplant last year but was back on the waiting list and has started dialysis again.
Georges Bonello Dupuis was walking in the name of his father, the former Finance Minister, who passed away two years ago to date and had suffered from kidney failure. “He used to drive himself to the renal unit and back for his dialysis every time,” his son recalled.
It was the second year the World Kidney Day Fun Run was organised and the second year that the weather was not on its side. Still, the number of participants increased and the organisers hope to have raised more than last year’s €1,000.
Each participant paid €10 – and some others donated more – with funds going to the Transplant Support Group, one of the organisers, together with the Vivian Corporation.
The aim of the walk, one of the events organised to mark World Kidney Day on Thursday, was also to increase the number of organ donors and application forms were distributed on the day.
At St George’s Square, Valletta, Mr Muscat thanked the participants for their support, pointing out that the one-and-a-half-hour walk did not compare to the five-hour stretches on dialysis the patients endured every other day.