GIVING THE GIFT OF LIFE

Organ donors are needed in the UK more than ever, with patients waiting an average of 550 days for a life-saving organ - time that many don't have

For many critically ill people, organ donation is their only chance of survival. But there are currently more than 7,000 people waiting for a life-saving organ in the UK, and in March 2022, due to a backlog because of COVID-19, almost 2,000 of those were from an ethnic minority background, who typically have to wait more than six months longer for an organ transplant due to a lack of compatible donors. To mark Organ Donation Week, the NHS is urging people from all ethnic backgrounds to use the NHS Organ Donor Register, accessible online, to register their wishes and hopefully save lives. Woman's Own investigates the huge impact it can have...

I was told I had a five to seven year wait for a donor'

Denise McCall, 51, from South Woodford, London, has had two life-saving kidney transplants.Typing out a group message on my phone to my family, I hesitated, deleting and rewriting each line. It was impossible to know what to write, because as much as I knew they all loved me, I realised what I was asking was possibly the biggest gift anyone could ever give another human being - I needed one of their kidneys to save my life.