April is National Donate Life Month

DAYTON, OH — (April 2, 2007) During National Donate Life Month, Life Connection of Ohio and Community Tissue Services ask you join the Ohio Donor Registry as an organ and tissue donor.  Organ and tissue transplants offer patients a new chance at healthy, productive, and normal lives and return them to their families, friends, and communities.  You have the power to change someone’s world by being a donor.  

A single donor can save up to 8 lives through organ donation and improve the lives of more than 50 people through tissue and eye donation.  Each year thousands of lives are saved through organ transplants.  Organs that can be donated include heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas and small intestines.

Tissue that can be donated include skin, heart valves, bones, tendons and ligaments, veins and corneas.  Skin grafts are used to treat severely burned patients; heart valves repair heart defects; and corneas are transplanted to restore sight.  Thousands of people are recipients of bone, veins, tendons and ligament.  These tissues are used during orthopedic, neurosurgery, dental and reconstructive surgeries.

Transplantation provides hope to thousands of people with organ failure.  In addition, transplanted tissue offers hundreds of thousands of people active and renewed lives.  But transplantation requires the commitment of organ, eye and tissue donors.  Make the commitment today to become a donor and join the Ohio Donor Registry at www.DonateLifeOhio.org.  Joining the Ohio Donor Registry will ensure that your decision to be a donor is honored.  Share your decision regarding donation with your family members so they may know and respect your decision regarding donation. 

To learn more about organ, eye and tissue donation and to join the Ohio Donor Registry, go to www.DonateLifeOhio.org or call Life Connection of Ohio 937-223-8223 or Community Tissue Services 937-222-0228. 

Fast Facts:

• In the United States, over 95,000 people are on the national organ waiting list; over 2,500 are Ohioans. 
• 18 people die each day due to a lack of available organs.
• Over 1 million tissue and corneal transplants were performed last year in the United States.
• People of all ages and medical histories should consider themselves potential donors.  Your medical condition at the time of death will determine what organs and tissue can be donated.
• All major religions support donation as an unselfish act of charity.
• There is no cost to the donor’s family or estate for donation.  The donor family pays only for medical expenses before death and for funeral expenses.
• It is illegal to buy or sell organs and tissue for transplantation in the United States.
• To become a donor, go to www.DonateLifeOhio.org.  You may also join at the BMV when you apply for or renew your driver’s license or state id card or complete a paper enrollment form.

Community Tissue Services serves the public through recovery, processing and distribution of human tissue donations used for transplantation. Community Tissue Services is composed of eight regional offices and three satellite offices:  Dayton, Ohio (Corporate Office); Fort Worth, Texas; Fresno, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Oregon; and Toledo, Ohio.  Satellite locations:  Boise, Idaho, Connersville, Indiana, and Medford, Oregon.  For more information about Community Tissue Services, visit www.communitytissue.org.

Life Connection of Ohio (LCO) is an independent, non-profit organ procurement organization approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the designated organ procurement organization serving northwest and west central Ohio. LCO is accredited by the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations and provides services to 53 hospitals, as well as donation education to the 2.2 million residents within a 23 county service area. For more information about Life Connection of Ohio, visit www.lifeconnectionofohio.org.

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