An orange dot can go a long way, said city and county employees at an ORGANized Press Conference to urge the people of Wisconsin to become organ donors.?
The conference, hosted by Wisconsin Public Service Health Insurance, discussed the organization’s plan to get 1 million Wisconsinites to put an orange dot on their driver’s license declaring they are organ donors by 2010. Currently, 539,000 people in the state are registered donors.
“Our commitment to ORGANize is to save lives and the campaign really came from our employees. We have a number of employees who are recipients and some who have lost family members because there weren’t enough organs,” said Hannah Rosenthal, corporate vice president of WPS.
Rosenthal said WPS has been in the forefront of organ transplantation initiatives for a long time and has strong employee support for this initiative.
In Wisconsin during 2008, 541 organs were available for transplant from 137 donors, according to Kathy Schultz, marketing consultant for University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.?
Schultz said UW hospital performed just five heart transplants last week, adding people can donate up to eight organs, though it is rare people will donate all eight.
Schultz added every 18 minutes someone dies from lack of an organ, and every 13 minutes a new name is added to the list of transplants. More than 100,000 people are waiting for transplants in the state of Wisconsin; 14,000 people are on the list to receive a transplant in Wisconsin.?
Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said she has been a registered organ donor since receiving her driver’s license at age 18.
“It’s important we all do this together because you never know when you or someone you love would need a transplant,” said Falk, who added this past winter her husband needed a donor cadaver bone to fix his ankle.
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said he is also encouraging city employees to get an orange dot and introduced his Basic Services Liaison Ray Harmon, who had his heart transplant Feb. 6, 2007.
Harmon said he had cardiomyopathy and was given a defibrillator implant. Whenever his heart jumped to a rapid rate, the? defibrillator shocked the heart to bring back to a regular rhythm.?
However, Harmon said it came to the point where the defibrillator went off three times a week and his heart was rapidly deteriorating.?
“I landed in the hospital, and they gave the news I couldn’t go home and I’d need to have a heart transplant,” Harmon said.?
Two days after his 40th birthday, Harmon received a heart. Although it has been a process to regain strength, Harmon said along with the support of friends and family, transplants can help people continue to live their lives.?
