There are currently eight people from the Island waiting for transplants. Many of them are kidney patients who spend hours every week attached to dialysis machines.
Eight others received transplants in the financial year 2018/2019.
The figures were released as Jersey prepares for the introduction of a new law on 1 July which will mean Islanders are presumed to have consented to organ donation unless they opt out. Families, however, will still make the final decision about donation following a relative’s death.
Today, nurse Sam North, who manages the Island’s intensive care unit and specialises in end-of-life care, has called on Islanders to have the conversation with their families about their organ donation wishes ahead of the new law coming into force.
Islanders are still encouraged to register their wishes on the NHS Organ Donor Register – of which Jersey is as much a part as regions in the UK – or use it to opt out altogether, if they so wish.
Mrs North has spoken of her hope that one day the Island will have a piece of public art, potentially in the new hospital, honouring those Islanders who have donated their organs to save others over the years.
‘We’d be looking to commission a piece of work to get a local artist creating something to remember those people who have made that decision,’ she said.
She added that the purpose of the new law was not to make people change their minds about organ donation, but to record their wishes and allow families to make informed decisions if they are required.
Since April 2015 there have been seven donors from the Island’s intensive-care unit.
In order to be suitable for donation to be considered, patients must have died in specific circumstances on a ventilator in an intensive-care environment. As a result, and because most of the Island’s serious head injury patients are treated in the UK, the number of people considered for donation locally is low.
Mrs North said she did not expect that number to necessarily increase as a result of the new law, but that families would be more prepared to consider the question should they need to.
‘I don’t think consent rates will necessarily change [after the law is introduced] but people will be talking about it more,’ she said.
‘We are not going to make the amount of people who die go up, but for those people who do die, we will be clearer about what their wishes are. No one wants to talk about death and dying, but it is going to happen to us all.
‘We talk about our funeral arrangements and what song we would want at a funeral, but no one says what they want to happen to their body.’
