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Let me start by introducing the success of the organ donation programme in the United
Kingdom. About fifty years ago, if you had developed a serious heart disease, you would
be dead straight away. Today, while sitting in this Great Hall, if you develop a disease
of heart, lung, liver or kidneys, you will become very very sick, but the chances of
you surviving this disease are much higher. You are sitting about half a mile from a very
big transplant centre, that helps, but credit also goes to the national organ donation programme.
You'll be admitted to the hospital, you'll be assessed by doctors and nurses, and an
organ donor will be identified somewhere in the country. His kidney or liver or heart
is brought over -- it usually comes in a box with ice around it -- you have a transplant
operation, you have it fitted into your body. It's a major operation so it takes you a few
weeks to recover, then you go home, back to your family, back to your job and start living
a productive life once again. That will be a happy ending. Not everyone is so lucky.
At present in the United Kingdom, there are 10,000 people who need a donor organ, they
are on a waiting list, Over the period of the next one year, 1,000 of these people will
die without getting a donor organ. Now why does that happen in spite of the excellent
organ transplantation programme we have in place? The demand is high, there are very
few organ donors compared to organ recipients, hence the promotion for organ donation. The
aspect that my research is assessing is that not all donated organs that come through are
accepted for transplantation, especially when a donor has a history of cancer, the organ
is assessed for the risk it poses to the recipient and most of these organs are discarded, they
are thrown in the bin, they are not accepted for transplantation. There are present guidelines
based on which this assessment takes place and that is what my study is assessing. I
have studied 15,000 donors and 30,000 recipients over the past 20 years in the UK, and found
that the present guidelines are too restrictive, as in they result in wastage of too many organs
which can safely be transplanted resulting in more lives being saved. I'm in the process
of writing national guidelines to change the donation practice in the United Kingdom, based
on which more organs will be delivered for transplantation.
The plan for the future is to discuss my results with the American and European transplant
congresses resulting in worldwide changes in transplantation practice, more organs being
accepted for transplantation, more lives being saved, more people going back to their families,
their jobs and contributing to society. As an example, a kidney that can be transplanted
results in seven years of additional survival, so that is the impact we're talking about
based on based on the results that I'm producing. Thank you very much.