Lomu's kidney transplant raises awareness of organ donation

30.07.2004
1.00pm

The Government will be asked to pay up to $5000 to kidney donors to improve the country's very low donor rate.

The New Zealand Kidney Foundation said today New Zealand had one of the lowest organ donor rates in the western world.

However, it also said former All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu's transplant in Auckland earlier this week had done "wonderful" things to raise the awareness of the need for more organ donors.

"Poor old Jonah -- what he has been through -- but it has been good for raising awareness," foundation education manager Carmel Gregan-Ford said.

She said it was hard to know why New Zealand's organ transplant was one of the lowest in the western world.

Even if a person opted to have "donor" included on their driver's licence, relatives could overrule that wish when the person died, Ms Gregan-Ford said.

However, she said more live donors were coming forward and the Government had been asked to contribute up to $5000 to their costs which included loss of wages, travel and accommodation.

It cost up to $55,000 a year to have someone on dialysis but only between $10,000 and $12,000 a year to maintain a transplant patient after the first year.

A transplant also allowed a person to go back to work.

Ms Gregan-Ford said New Zealand did not have a donor register but the Land Transport Safety Authority had a database of people who indicated on their driving licence a wish to donate an organ.

Last year, 72 kidneys were harvested from 36 bodies, and 42 living donors offered their kidneys.

There were about 110 kidney transplants a year in New Zealand but that figure could go a lot higher if there were more donors, she said.

"At any one time there are 350 people on the waiting list for a kidney. There are about 400 in New Zealand for other organs such as a liver or lungs," she said.

- NZPA