DonateLife Week 2019 is an annual community awareness campaign that runs from Sunday July 28 to Sunday August 4 to promote organ and tissue donation in Australia.
The focus of the week is to encourage more Australians to register to be a donor and to have a conversation about it with their family and friends.
One organ and tissue donor can save and improve the lives of many people.
This year's campaign focus is to find a 'plus one'. If every registered donor found one person who was not already registered and encouraged them to do so, we could double the amount of potential donors.
Last year the lives of 128 people were saved by donations from 41 Western Australian residents, giving them the ultimate gift of life.
So far in 2019, 29 Western Australians have donated organs to 73 people and 117 people are currently waitlisted for life-saving transplants.
Nationally around 1,400 people are currently waitlisted for a transplant. A further 11,000 people are on dialysis of whom many would benefit from a kidney transplant.
It only takes a minute to register and all you need is your Medicare card. But more importantly, once you have registered to be a donor, you need to tell your family and friends and encourage others to register to be a donor.
Register today at https://donatelife.gov.au/
As stated by Health Minister Roger Cook:
"Although, we know most Australians are willing to donate their organs and tissue, only 37 per cent of people in Western Australia are registered organ donors and we'd like this to be much higher.
"We encourage more Western Australians to register to be a donor and to have a conversation about it with their family and friends.
"Registering to be an organ donor is simple and it could one day save the lives of many people."
