What is organ donation?
Organ donation is basically when a healthy person donates their organs be transplanted into another person. The donated organs will be given to someone who has damaged organs that needed replacement. For example – you can donate one of your kidneys to a person whose kidneys are failing or depended on life long dialysis due to kidney failure.
There are two types of organ donation: living and deceased. Donated organs are given to someone who has damaged organs. By replacing their damaged organs with healthy donated organs, the recipient would be able to go back to living their lives fully and healthily.
Who can donate?
Anyone can be a donor regardless of age or medical condition. Whether or not you can donate your organs actually depends on your physical condition at the time of death and this will be assessed by the transplant health professionals.
Why should we donate?
By donating your organs, you would be able to save and improve so many lives even after death. You never know who would benefit from your decision to donate. You may even have a loved one on the organ transplant waiting list. So many people are waiting to get organ transplant in order to continue to live. By making this selfless life-changing act – you would be able to give so many people a second lease of life. You would be able to alter the course of their lives for the better.
When can we donate?
Anytime!
Where to sign up?
You can go to this website to sign up
http://www.dermaorgan.gov.my/en/
If you are in Kuala Lumpur and want to know more on organ donation or get more people to be involved in organ donation, you can also attend this upcoming event!
Dr. Nur Hidayati is an internal medicine specialist with special interest in infectious disease and nephrology. She is a permanent columnist for the Malaysian Medical Gazette. Learn more about her on The Team page.
[This article belongs to The Malaysian Medical Gazette. Any republication (online or offline) without written permission from The Malaysian Medical Gazette is prohibited.]