A decade since her transplant, Catherine MacLachlan (25) has gone on to enjoy a full and active life and is now calling on Jersey parents to consider signing their children up to the register, which although it is administered by the NHS also covers the Island – currently there are 11,291 Islanders on the register, 179 of them under-18s.
Miss MacLachlan and her family, including her Hospital consultant father Neil, set up the Love Hearts Appeal for Great Ormond Street Hospital in 2012 after she underwent a life-saving operation there aged 15 and to date it has raised £104,000 for a new cardiac intensive care cubicle at the London hospital, which provides essential medical care for Jersey children, with 1,743 visits from Islanders in the past five years.
As part of its ongoing work the charity also wants to increase the number of Islanders on the organ donor register, as at around 11 per cent of the population it is well below that of the UK, where around 30 per cent are registered, and it was also successful in getting policy changed so that Islanders can now sign up to the NHS organ donation register when applying for a driving licence.
