NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana hospitals have joined in what officials say is an unprecedented statewide organ donation campaign.
At Opelousas General Health Services, a green box and red bow have been added to the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency’s donation form, asking patients and visitors, “Give the best gift of all, the gift of life.”
The forms are to be put at hospital entranceways and on its Web site after the Thanksgiving holidays, said hospital spokeswoman Deanna LeJeune.
More than 1,800 Louisiana residents and more than 100,000 people nationwide are on transplant waiting lists, according to LOPA, which joined with the Louisiana Hospital Association for the project. More than three-quarters nationwide and almost 90 percent in Louisiana are waiting for kidneys.
Bill Holman, chief executive officer at Baton Rouge General Hospital, instituted the drive when he became LHA’s chairman in July. The organizations’ goal is to increase participation in the state’s organ donor registry 10 percent by the end of 2009.
Aisha Huertas, spokeswoman for Donate Life America, a national nonprofit that works with state organ procurement agencies, said the Louisiana partnership is a first.
Opelousas General, in largely rural St. Landry Parish where about 200,000 people live, hopes to convince 1,400 to sign on as organ donors during the recruitment drive, said spokeswoman Michelle Perkins. “When you can see all the lives this can save — we’re very passionate about it,” she said.
Plans include distributing giving organ donation forms at blood drives, adding donation information to phone messages while callers are on hold and spotlighting organ donation on local radio health programs.
Officials hope the program, largely based on materials developed by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, increases registration from nearly 1.7 million to more than 1.8 million.
More than 39.5 percent of all Louisiana residents are registered donors. “I’m actually hoping to really push the 50 percent mark” by the end of next year, said Kirsten Heintz, director of development at LOPA.
The vast majority of people who sign up do so when they get their driver’s licenses — an arrangement possible in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, about 35 percent of all licensed drivers agree to donate organs; in Utah and nine other states, at least 60 percent do so, according to Donate Life America’s Web site.
The goal of a 10 percent increase in Louisiana’s registry compares to about 6.5 percent over the 12 months ending in mid-November. During that period, the registry showed a net increase of about 8,500 people a month — 10,000 joining and about 1,500 dropping out. Looking at it another way, the LHA goal would increase monthly sign-ups by more than 3,200.
“We are so looking forward to their success so we can promote this to other states or work with Louisiana to promote it to other states,” said Mary Ganikos, chief of the education branch of HRSA’s transplant division.
From January through October, 38 percent of Louisiana’s organ donors had been part of the registry, Heintz said. Families agreed organs could be taken from the rest, who were on ventilators but were diagnosed as brain-dead.
Debbie Laccasin, LOPA hospital resource coordinator and family advocate, said some donors don’t inform their families. Those who already know of a donor’s decision have the easiest time, she said. “It’s so very difficult to make a decision like that for someone else.”
Holman said his interest in transplants began in the 1980s, when, as CEO of University Hospitals of Cleveland, he looked into a patient’s empty chest during the first heart transplant performed there.
“They were getting ready to put the donor heart into the chest cavity. It struck me how fragile human life truly is,” he said.
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