20 May marks one year since Max and Keira’s Law came into effect in England, which saw the country shift to an ‘opt out’ system for organ donation.
NHS Blood and Transplant is publishing the latest data, highlighting the positive impact the new English law has had to date in helping to save lives.
The latest figures, collated up until 30 April 2021, show that so far since the law changed, 296 people in England have donated their organs after being considered as willing to donate as they had not expressed an organ donation decision during their lifetime.
These donations account for 29 per cent of all 1,021 donations that took place during the same time period and resulted in a total of 714 organs transplanted.
Prior to the law change, around 80 per cent of people in England said that they supported organ donation in principle, but only 38 per cent had actually recorded their decision to donate. When asked, the majority said they just hadn’t got around to it.
John Forsythe, Medical Director of Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation at NHSBT, said: “This past year since Max and Keira’s Law came into effect in England has been completely unprecedented in the history of the NHS, as well as in wider society. All the careful plans we’d made for the introduction of the law had to be quickly reset.
“In the early days of the pandemic, many of our specialist organ donation nurses volunteered to help care for patients with Covid in intensive care. Training and other preparations for the new law had to be fitted around this. To see such a positive and heart-warming response from the public, especially those families facing the very worst news, in some of the hardest circumstances, is such an incredible testament to the strength of those families. Many have told us how organ donation offered comfort in an otherwise tragic situation.
“We have been really encouraged by the levels of support shown for organ donation over the past year, and the phenomenal efforts from organ donation and transplantation colleagues – as well as wider clinical community – to keep organ donation and transplants happening in the most challenging circumstances.”
