In Sweden, 800 people are queuing up to get a new body. It is about the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys, intestines and pancreas.
Week 45, it is the so-called "National Donation Week", an annual recurring national campaign week initiated by the National Board of Health and Welfare. One purpose of the week is to get more people to decide on donation as the need for organs is greater than availability. Although the majority of Swedes, 85 per cent, are positively prepared to donate organs after their death, the number of donations does not increase. The causes are, according to Pia Löwhagen, chief physician at the intensive care unit at Sahlgrenska and donor responsible physician in Västra Götaland.
- There are very few who can become donors, it requires a special death, you have to lie in a respirator and no more than a few hundred a year die in such a way that they can become donors and if there is also no known donation will it is up to relatives to interpret what the deceased had wanted, she says.
"We need to get better at talking to relatives"According to chief physician Pia Löwhagen, it is best to register their will in the national donation register which facilitates care and relatives, but care also needs to be better at talking to relatives about this, she says.
- Sometimes there is a misguided consideration. It is not to put a stone on the burden to speak of this. On the contrary, it can be a light in the dark for the worst has already happened to these people.
About one person a week dies in Sweden because a body has not arrived on time. Medical intervention for a dying patient is necessary for organ donation after death. Such efforts are given today, but practices vary between different hospitals. It is unclear to patients, relatives and staff what to do and when to do it. In the new donation report, the government has asked for clearer rules to promote donations.
Last year in Västra Götaland, the donated organs came from people aged 3-86 years.