2 April 2016
By Bryan T. Smyth
bryan@TheCork.ie
The Mayor of Cork County Cllr. John Paul O’ Shea has today, 2nd April 2016, urged the people of Cork to sign up and support Organ Donation.
Organ Donor Awareness Week 2016 takes place over the next week (2nd -9th April) and is organised by the Irish Kidney Association (IKA). The focus of Organ Donor Awareness Week is to raise awareness about the ongoing and ever increasing demand for organ transplantation which relies on the public for organ donation. The Cork Branch of the IKA will be actively encouraging the Cork public to support organ donation this week.
Mayor O’ Shea said “The key message for this week is to encourage people and their families to talk about organ donation and keep the reminders of their willingness to donate visible by carrying the organ donor card, downloading the Smartphone App and permitting Code 115 to be included on their driver’s license”.
Mayor O’ Shea added “Life is a gift that organ donation brings. The conversation on organ donation could be life changing for someone so very desperately in need. The mere thought of making a decision such as organ donation, in what are quite often very tragic circumstances, is something I can only imagine. But what I do know is how I would want to honour a family member or a friend if that is what they requested, and I know how important it is to let my family and friends know what it means to me. This is a life changing conversation. It is also a life saving conversation”.
Organ Donor Awareness Week also serves as a fundraising exercise for the Irish Kidney Association as 74% of its funds are generated from the public. Throughout the week, volunteers from the Cork Branch of the IKA will be out on the streets of Cork, and in shopping centres throughout the county, selling ‘forget-me-not-flower’ emblems, brooches, pens and shopping trolley discs. All proceeds will go towards the Irish Kidney Association’s aid for patients on dialysis and those patients fortunate enough to have received a kidney transplant.
To sign up to be an organ donor, you can Freetext the word DONOR to 50050, log onto www.ika.ie, download your own ‘Donor ECard’ on your smartphone or permit Code 115 to be included in your driving license.
