Edwina Garza of the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance considers organ donations as a person’s opportunity for a “last act of charity.”
Donations are not limited to internal organs, and the need is definitely not limited either.
There currently are 107,442 Texans on the transplant waitlist and 13,079,187 are registered donors, according to Donate Life Texas, the organization that works with the state’s department of public safety to register donors.
ORGANS, EYES AND TISSUE
Though, according to Garza, just about 1% of registered donors are presented with the opportunity to donate, each person who does has the ability to save the lives of eight others.
Donors can also give another person the ability to see through cornea donations and improve the lives of nearly 75 more through tissue donations.
In Hidalgo County, 42.47% of adults are registered as donor organs, while 50.29% in Cameron County are. That number in Starr County is 33.91%, and 33.12% in Willacy County.
Garza is asking the community to imagine how many more lives could be saved if those rates were higher.
“The more we normalize donation, the more lives we can save,” she said.
Signing up to be a donor can be as simple as saying yes while applying for a Texas drivers license or ID card. If a person who initially said no but would like to register, they can do so through donatelifetexas.org.
Through the website, donors can also choose which organs they do not wish to donate.
People of all ages can register to be organ donors, and because of advancing medicine, those who are diabetic, have a history of cancer or have HIV can sign up.
“If you have no use for your organs or tissue, why not donate them to someone who can have a life that they never even thought possible,” Garza said.
BONE MARROW, STEM CELLS
People can also donate bone marrow and stem cells through procedures that are much less time consuming and invasive than methods performed a decade ago.
Donating bone marrow used to require an extraction through a person’s hip — now it can be done with an approach similar to donating blood.
Bone marrow or stem cell transplants are life-saving treatments for people suffering from blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, as well as other kinds of blood diseases. As many as 14,000 people are in need for such transplants a year, according to Be the Match, a global nonprofit that facilitates bone marrow transplants.
Of those needing these transplants, 30% will find a match within their family. Most patients rely on strangers to sign up to Be the Match’s donor registry.
Similar to organ donations, people of color are less likely to find matches for bone marrow compared to people who are white since rates of people of color on the registry are lower. According to Be the Match, the chances of someone who is white finding their match is 77%, and that number for Hispanics and Latinos is 46%.
Those in the community who wish to join the registry can do so through join.bethematch.org/UTRGV or text UTRGV to 61474. After filling out the questionnaire, those registering will have to swab their cheeks to 10 seconds with a kit which will be mailed to them, which will have to be mailed back afterwards.
Bone marrow and stem cell transplants are limited to those between the ages of 18 and 44.
About one in every 430 who are registered as bone marrow donors will be matched to someone in need and donate.
“It’s a few minutes of your time to save another person’s life, or help heal them,” said Alyssa Cerroni, a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and volunteer for Be the Match.
After an eight-year long wait, Anjanette Gonzales received the kidney transplant she needed to live without being tethered to dialysis appointments. Read her story below:
