The Examiner reporter KASEY WILKINS spoke to DonateLife state medical director Dr Andrew Turner about the organisation's key messages for DonateLife Week 2019.
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KW: Can you tell me about your role with DonateLife?
AT: I provide medical advice and do a bit of liasing at the federal level, putting Tasmania's views forward at those meetings, and also assisting - to a degree - in implementing the federal strategies into Tasmania.
KW: What are the key messages for this year's DonateLife Week?
AT: The most important thing for people to realise is organ donation is actually a very rare event. Each time it occurs we really need to maximise getting the right decision, because we always ask families for permission for a donation to occur.
To get that right decision, the best way is for people to put themselves on the Australian Organ Donor Register. If you have your name on the register, there's a nine in 10 chance your family will say yes to organ donation.
If you don't put yourself on the register and you don't have that conversation with your family, then there's probably about a one in two chance that your family will say no, because they just don't know what the right thing to do is.
We're actually very proud in Tassie at the moment, because we've got the second highest rate of registration in Australia.
We've got 48 per cent of people over the age of 16, but about 7 per cent of people aged between 16 and 25 aren't registered. We'd really like to get the message out to them. We know they've very much in favour, but we need them to take the next step.
We'd also like people on the register to have a chat with people who aren't on the register to try and encourage them to also put their names on. At the moment, our overall consent rate for donation is about six out of 10. If we got seven out of 10 we'd be one of the world leaders in organ donation.
KW: You mentioned drivers licences - what are some of the other myths and misconceptions surrounding donation?
AT: I think a number of people think perhaps they're too old for organ donation. Again, that's rarely true. We've had even in Australia two by the age of 80 organ or tissue donors. Age is not necessarily a barrier.
People often think their lifestyle decisions would preclude them from being a donor.
For example, young people who smoke or young people who do recreational drugs, think they could not be a donor - that's not true at all. It's based on the medical situation at the time and the decisions made.
KW: What are Tasmania's donation statistics like?
AT: We've been reasonably fortunate that our figures have been a bit higher than the rest of Australia for a few years now. Last year we had 14 donors. That put us ahead of the national rate.
The reason that Tassie does well is I think we've developed quite a good culture in our hospitals to promote organ donation.
KW: Do you have a message for Tasmanians who are yet to sign up to the register?
AT: Absolutely. It's a very simple process now, just go to donatelife.gov.au. If you have your Medicare card on you, it only takes 30 seconds to a minute really to put yourself on the register.
If you haven't got a computer or you're not computer savvy, you can go to your local Medicare [or grab a paper form]. If people make that decision, share that decision with your loved ones.
We'd love to have people encourage other people who haven't made the effort to sign up to the register.
DonateLife Week runs until August 4.