Organ donations always in demand

John Baker hoped to raise more than a flag at Sacred Heart Medical Center on Tuesday. He hoped to raise consciousness about an issue dear to his heart – organ and tissue donation.

Baker’s daughter, Krista, who had cystic fibrosis, died while waiting for new lungs. It took her six months to get on the waiting list for a double lung transplant. Upon her death on April 19, 2000, the 20-year-old had been on the list eight months.

When she died, her corneas gave sight to two people.

“The hardest thing to do is approach somebody in grief,” Baker said.

People need to register as organ donors, he said, not just tell their families, who often balk when the time comes to donate.

There are about 90,000 people waiting for organs in the United States, 1,200 of them in the Inland Northwest, Baker told a crowd gathered around the hospital’s flagpole for a ceremony honoring donors.

Nationally, every day 18 people die waiting for a donation, said Diana Clark, president and CEO of LifeCenter Northwest, the organ procurement agency for this region.

“Although studies have shown 90 percent of people are in favor of donation, many don’t know the steps to take to become a donor,” she said, in a news release announcing Tuesday’s ceremony.

Among the crowd were representatives of the Northwest Lions Eye Bank and Northwest Tissue, as well as Sacred Heart. In May the hospital was one of 184 nationwide to be honored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for achieving an organ donation rate of 75 percent or higher in a 12-month period.

Sacred Heart performs about 65 cardiac and kidney transplants a year.

Baker, of Spokane, is a volunteer for Project Life, a group of donor families and recipients who help educate the public on the need for organ donations. He was one of several speakers, including organ recipients, at the flag-raising.

The white banner, which bears the words “Honoring the Gift of Life through Organ and Tissue Donations,” will fly each day someone receives a transplant or donates an organ at Sacred Heart.