ORGAN DONATION
EXPERIENCES
Donations take place all around us every day. Everybody knows about someone who is a donor. In fact, in our case we know somebody who had been on the last step. We think that we could take advantage of this and have a new perspective about what an organ transplant is like.
We have seen an interview to a man who had been transplanted, but we wanted to know more about what a donation means, and what it involves. Due to that fact, we decided to interview JOSÉ ROLDÁN RAMÍREZ, actually the regional coordinator of transplants in Navarre.
INTERVIEW TO JOSÉ ROLDÁN RAMIREZ THE COORDINATOR OF TRANSPLANTS OF NAVARRE.
"Sometimes we have received some blackmail as "I accept the donation of my relative in exchange of receiving financial assistance""
1. We know that you are the coordinator of transplants in Navarre; However can you explain us what your job consists on?
My job as regional coordinator of transplants consists on coordinating and supervising the programme of organ and tissue donation and also the transplants of each type. At the same time, I'm the responsible of the functioning of the bone marrow donation and transplant programme in Navarre.
2. What does exactly the donation consists on?
It is the act for which a person gives an organ or a tissue for free to a person who needs it because of an illness.
3. How many types of donors are?
There are two types of donors. On the one hand, there is the living donor who carries out the donation alive. On the other hand, there is the dead donor who is the person who donates the organs or tissues after dying.
4. And who can be a donor?
Leaving apart the donation alive, a tissue and organ donor can be anyone, at any age, who didn't suffer any illness, such as cancer or any infectious illness; whose organs have possibilities of being transplanted. Definitely, almost everyone can be a donor.
5. How do you see the donation from the point of view of a coordinator of transplants?
The donation is a right that every single person has, so my mainly rol as a coordinator is trying that every person who dies can have that right and can reach to be a donor.
6. Why is the donation so important?
Apart of being a right, the donation is a tool for saving lifes and helps to get better some patient’s life quality. Now that the superheroes are so famous, who with their actions save lives, who a better superhero that a donor with her death; this is how really we can save lives. For a lot of people, the donation is the only treatment that they have left, and we have to give them that opportunity.
7. Do you think that nowadays there are more people who are conscient of the importance of what a donation means?
Little by little, the society is getting aware of the importance of donation. Thanks to donation campagnes, medias, social medias and personal experiences of donor’s families and transplanted patients, we have achieved to get to a big part of the adult population. Campagnes, as for example where you are taking part now, make the importance of the donation to expand among the young population, who are the ones that in a future can be donors or who are going to be the consent for a member of their families to be a donor.
8. What value has the donor card has?
Nowadays the donor card has a symbolic value, because the final decision on whether a dead person can be a donor or not, falls on your most direct relative or legal representative. In other words, if a person dies and has a donor card but his or her immediate family member is against the donation, the family member's decision is respected. The only document that is binding and must be respected is the Advance Wills Document, which consists of a document that people made with their family and doctor and in which you determine how you want care to be at the end of life, that is, how do you want to die? In this document you can say that when you die you want to be a donor of organs and tissues and we as coordinators, when we face a patient who can be a donor, we are obliged to check if you have this document in the Clinical History.
In the event that the deceased does not have a family or the document that I have mentioned before, it will be the judge who determines whether he can be a donor or not, who usually says yes.
9. Why are not there too many people who say no to donating in Navarre?
Apart because of the generosity of the Navarros and the awareness that we have about the donation, I think that most of the families that accept the donation is because of the trust that in general the population have in the public sanitary system. They completely trust in the health professionals and if they ask them for donating, how are they going to doubt about what they are asking for.
10. What is your reaction when people refuse to do it?
With total respect. I try to understand the reason of their refusement and I put myself in their situation. From this perspective I try to convince them of the importance that donation has with total sincerity and if finally I don’t get it, I thank them for hearing to me. In sum, I react with respect, empathy, and authenticity.
11. And when they agree?
You can imagine. Especially it is satisfaction for getting that a person exercise his or her right to donate, with the benefit that this have for people who these organs are for.
12. Do the family get any money ?
No, no, and no. The act of donating is altruist and we can never allow donor’s family members to get money for donating the organs of their relative. As coordinators, sometimes we have received some blackmail as "I accept the donation of my relative in exchange of receiving financial assistance" or for
example in foreign donors, "in exchange of paying the expenses derived from
take the corpse of my relative to his country of origin".
13. From the point of view of the money is it worth it?
Yes of course, and if you don’t trust me ask it to a transplanted person. But if we make datas the amount of money that we spend for a kidney transplant it is the same that we save in two years by no doing any dialysis to patient whose kidneys are hurt.
14. Does the traffic of organs in Spain exist?
As with economic compensation, I am clear with my answer: No. This does not mean that in the rest of the world and especially in underdeveloped countries there isn’t organ trafficking, or that even Spanish people have gone to these countries and bought an organ. It is the job of all healthcare professionals, but especially those of us in the world of donation and transplantation, to be attentive and identify this type of facts: they are persecuted by law and they can finished with prison sentences. The same can be said with the economic payment for the donation, which I have forgot to commnet it before.
15. Do you want to add anything?
Thank you for making me this interview, and for giving me the possibility of teaching you on what my job and my role as a coordinator consist and to glad the interest that you have put during doing me this interview. Now is your turn, the time of spreading that we all have the right of donating if we arrive to that situation.
And one question, are you in favour of donation?