Profiles
Richard Branson Virgin Enterprises Limited
I’m quite used to people approaching me in the street for help. It’s what happens when you have a recognisable face.
But from the outset, Fiona Hills was different.
She came up to me as I strolled along Notting Hill Gate in London three months ago.
I was immediately taken by her – she was a vibrant, smiling, kind, happy, thoughtful person.
That made her story even more heartbreaking.
Fiona said she was terribly sorry to bother me but explained she had a liver disease and would die unless she could get a liver transplant.
She went on to tell me how 1,000 patients die needlessly every year while awaiting life-saving transplant surgery because of a lack of organs.
She had written to David Cameron but got no response and hoped maybe I was in a position where I could cut through the bureaucracy and get things done.
Fiona told me that, while 90% of the population support organ donation, just 29% are officially registered.
As I stood chatting to her in the street, I was embarrassed. I admitted that I had never signed up and did not have a donor card despite wishing to donate my organs when I die.
It had crossed my mind and was something I had debated over the years and therefore I felt guilty that I had not done something about it.
Then Fiona explained the proposed opt-out system to me, which makes carrying a donor card redundant.
This system, also known as ‘presumed consent’, is used with great success in other European countries, including France, Spain and Austria.
It is incredibly simple and saves thousands of lives every year.
Under the system, every person who dies is a potential donor unless they opt out from the transplant register.
As a result, the waiting lists for organs in these countries have all but disappeared.
As I stood listening to Fiona, it became screamingly obvious the same thing needs to be adopted here – and quickly.
That’s why I decided to launch a campaign for a change in the law, making it easy for everyone to become a donor unless they do not wish to be one.
When my father Ted died in March, aged 93, despite the fact that he wanted to become a donor no one asked us and in truth it was the last thing on our minds at the time.
Looking back, I know he’d have loved the idea of helping someone else and living on through them.
Britain has one of the lowest donor rates in Europe, with just 13 people out of every million donating organs.
People are dying completely unnecessarily in the UK because the wrong system is in place.
When people die they either go to a crematorium or are buried and their organs go to waste, organs which could save somebody.
Fiona is 42 and suffering from end-stage liver failure as a result of a genetic condition, auto-immune hepatitis.
She was placed on the transplant list in 2009 when her condition deteriorated and now lives in constant pain, spending three days every six weeks having six litres of fluid drained from her abdomen.
It just seems sad to think Fiona could die in a few years, yet with a slight change in the law she will be kept alive. The current UK system also puts young doctors and nurses in an awful position.
They face the prospect of asking relatives if they will allow the person they’ve just lost to be an organ donor. I cannot think of a worse question to have to ask, or indeed a worse time to ask the question.
As a result, many medical professionals simply don’t have the courage to ask or feel it is too inappropriate.
I have since spoken to my family about it and will do my best to always carry a card.
But realistically the law needs to be changed so people don’t have to think about always carrying a donor card.
When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, he tried to introduce presumed consent.
Sadly, the law was never changed after objections from Muslim and Catholic groups.
But as I see it, if someone has a religious reason – or any other reason for that matter – why they wish to opt out then fine, they can.
I am writing to David Cameron and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to ask for their support.
The number of patients in the UK awaiting transplants is staggering.
There were 6,920 waiting in 2009, according to the NHS Blood Transplant Organ Donation and Transplantation Directorate.
The majority of those were on dialysis costing £193million a year. If they had received a transplant, the annual cost would be £41million – a £152million saving to the NHS.
The fact the Mirror is helping to highlight the issue is fantastic and will help enormously.
The important thing is that organs are found for those who are in desperate need today. We will keep up the pressure and I urge Mirror readers to do the same by sending their messages to my foundation, Virgin Unite.
People are dying unnecessarily every day in this country. It needs to stop.
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