The Ongoing and Urgent Need for Organ Donors: Donate Your Organs and Be a Superhero!

The unos.org website is a treasure trove of information about the need for and distribution of organs used transplant. I rarely visit it now, yet was a very frequent guest prior to my transplant as I tracked the number of people on the transplant waiting list at my transplant center and tried to gauge my priority versus others on the list.

Today I visited the site and sighed at the data posted front and center on the home page:

According to its real-time tally, 103,790 people are waiting for organ transplants as of 2:23 p.m. today. Year to date, as of September 18, 2009, 14,191 transplants had been performed with organs donated by 7,249 donors.

Organ donation is the ultimate gift any person could give. Given the extraordinary need for organs, every donor becomes an automatic superhero, a champion, a life-saver.

Won't you be a superhero? It's easy - visit www.organdonor.gov to learn how you can sign up. As noted on the website, "Each organ and tissue donor saves or improves the lives of as many as 50 people." What could be more super than that?

Photo by Charles Thompson