"You may not know someone now, but you will eventually know someone who needs a transplant," said Michele Dabal, a member of the NJ Sharing Network's Board of Trustees during a presentation on January 10 to Pingry's Health 10 students. Her visit, sponsored by Pingry's Health Education Department, was intended to highlight the importance of organ and tissue donation, a new topic for Pingry's curriculum.
"Organ and tissue donation has been added to the Health 10 curriculum this year to provide our students with an understanding of the benefits of donating and the impact on the people whose lives have been saved. Our goal is to enable our students to have the necessary information to make a decision to register as organ donors when they reach adulthood," said Health Education Department Chair Sue Marotto.
The recipient of a liver transplant as an adult, Ms. Dabal shared some startling statistics with the class. Notably, 5,000 people in New Jersey are on the waiting list for an organ transplant, and more than 120,000 in the United States are on a waiting list. Every day, three New Jersey residents are added to the list, and, every three days, a New Jersey resident will die while waiting for a transplant. Of the major organs that people are waiting for—kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs—kidneys are first on the list because those whose kidneys are not functioning normally can wait to receive one because of dialysis (a process by which a machine cleans their blood, several times each week).
When it comes to organ donations, one person can save the lives of eight people because of potential distribution of multiple organs (including kidneys, because a pair of kidneys can be split up between two people). And nothing matters for the donation except for similarity between the recipient's body and donor's body, specifically blood type, immune system, and size of the organ. When it comes to tissue donations—corneas, valves, bones, veins, tendons, skin—up to 50 lives can be enhanced, and there is no wait list.
What came as a surprise to many in the room is that not everyone can be an organ donor. In fact, Ms. Dabal said, less than one percent of all deaths can be organ donors since not every organ is recoverable...based on how people lived or died, or medical conditions they had, such as kidney stones. With that in mind, Ms. Dabal and her guest Missy Rodriguez, the world's first 10-year-old liver transplant patient who kept her transplant a secret for nearly 30 years, shared that they feel even more fortunate to have received transplants. Missy's Miracle Scholarship, a program of the NJ Sharing Network Foundation, was created to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Ms. Rodriguez's transplant.
Ms. Dabal concluded her presentation by offering multiple ways that students and others can take action to support organ and tissue donation:
- Talking to one's family to make a decision
- Spreading the word
- Joining Donate Life Clubs
- Volunteering for the NJ Sharing Network
- Participating in the 5K Celebration of Life.
Those who would like more information and/or wish to donate can sign up on the NJ Sharing Network's website or at the Motor Vehicle Commission.
"We are all in life together," Ms. Dabal said, "so we might as well help each other."
Contact: Greg Waxberg '96, Communications Writer, gwaxberg@pingry.org