Speech On Organ Donation

Today we are in great need of a solution to solve the problem of the shortage of human organs available for transplant. The website for Donate Life America estimates that in the United States over 100 people per day are added to the current list of over 100,000 men, women, and children that are waiting for life-saving transplants. Sadly enough, approximately 18 people a day on that list die just because they cannot outlive the wait for the organ that they so desperately need to survive. James Burdick, director of the Division of Transplantation for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services confirms, “The need for organ transplants continues to grow and this demand continues to outpace the supply of transplantable organs”. The

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According to United Network for Organ Sharing (2010) organ donations and transplantation are the removal of organs and tissues from one person and placed into another person’s body. The need for organ transplantation usually occurs when the recipient organ has failed (UNOS, 2010). Organ donation can save the lives of many individuals who are on the waiting list for an organ donation. Becoming an organ donor can be a difficult decision. Many people have the false beliefs about being an organ donor. An example would be if organ donor is on their driver’s license and a person is in a life-threatening accident everything will not be done to save their life. There is an increase need for organ donors and unfortunately the need for organ

For over 13 year I have worked in healthcare and I have seen multiple patients die from organ failure as they waited on the transplant list. I’ve seen patients lose their quality of life as they sit in hospitals for weeks and months at a time as they waited for a kidney transplant. I also know people who have donated the organs of their loved ones and were blessed to know that their loss was the beginning of another person’s life.

Please try and consider the following situation. You’re sitting in an emergency room, waiting for your dad to awake after falling into liver failure, costing him to need a new liver. Not knowing if it’s possible, crossing your fingers. You wish you could help, but you can’t. Someone else can. An organ donor. According to organdonor.gov, about 116,000 U.S. citizens are waiting on the organ transplant list as of August 2017. To put that number into perspective, that’s more than double the amount of people that can fit into Yankee Stadium. And to make matters worse, 20 people each day die waiting for a transplant.(organdonor.gov) Organ donation can offer patients a second chance at life and provides

“6,935 people are dying because they had to wait. That’s 19 people dying per day for an entire year”(Barry). That’s nearly 7,000 lives; which is equivalent to to almost 25% of the current undergraduate body here at UW-Madison. According to Dr. Chris Barry, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center, “19 people die per day on the organ donor recipient list because there aren’t enough people signing their organ donor consent forms”. He proposes that we need to increase people's knowledge and tear down the myths and barriers of organ donation to facilitate their decision to donate.

Attention-getter. In the United States alone it is estimated that 122,957 men, women, and children need some kind of organ transplant according to the united network for organ sharing.

In the United States alone more than 116,000 men, women, and children are waiting to receive an organ but only about 28,000 operations are done each year, one person can save and or heal eight up to 85 lives with organ and tissue donations. Every day 22 people die waiting for a lifesaving operation and every ten minutes another person is added to the ever-growing list. Many people are donors but one in every three are over the age of 50 and may not have viable organs or pass in a way to donate. For every 1,000 deaths there are only three people who pass in a way that donation can take place. Roughly 95% of U.S. adults support organ donation but only about 54% are signed up to be a donor. Up to 83% of people on the waiting list are in need of a kidney and 13% need a liver. On a yearly basis as many as 8,000 people on the waiting list die (Organ Donation Statistics).

Lack of organ donors is a major issue worldwide and we can help them by giving them a gift of life.

More than 123,000 men, women, and children currently at this minute need a lifesaving organ transplant.

How do you feel when you have to wait for something that you really, really want? What if it was something you couldn’t live without? Imagine you are lying in a hospital bed and you have no choice but to impatiently wait for that one organ you and your body are depending on to survive. Many people face this struggle every day. These people are waiting on a list for their perfect match… the perfect person to be their organ donor. An organ donor is a person who has an organ, or several organs, removed in ordered to be transplanted into another person.

Every two hours someone dies waiting for an organ transplant. 18 people will die each day waiting for an organ. One organ donor can save up to 8 lives. . THE NEED IS REAL

In a world where life expectancy has increased tremendously over the last century because of new technology and medical procedures, we find humanity ever pushing the boundaries on what it can do to prevent loss of life where possible. One example is the area of organ donation and transplantation. However, unlike many other technologies or procedures which can be built, manufactured, or learned, organ transplantation requires one thing that we can’t create yet: an organ itself. Because our increased life span causes more people to require a replacement organ when theirs starts to fail, the demand has far outrun the supply and the future only looks to get worse. “Between the years 1988 and 2006 the number of transplants doubled, but the

Attention Getter: Let’s look at the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. They tell us that 116,567 people need a lifesaving organ transplant. Of those, 75,685 people are active the waiting list candidates. There are only 12,212 donors total donors as of 2017.

donation. 2. The reality is, as we all know, that we are not invincible, and