Highlighting the acute need for organ donors

Her aim is to make organ donation part of the normal pattern, to see how the current system can be expanded, strengthened and improved and to increase public awareness.

She is well equipped for her new role, with a formidably successful business background which includes seven years on the board of the South London Training and Enterprise Council, helping to launch training councils nationally. Angela, who lives in Ferring, had also managed a busy Citizens' Advice Bureau and run a consultancy company for ten years.

But she also has a rare understanding of both sides of the transplant fence, knowing how organ donations need sensitive handling, and acutely aware of the lengthening queue of people urgently needing a transplant to survive as organ availability diminishes.

"My daughter was my best friend. She was a wonderful, bubbly person, just 39 years old when she died, and we had been expecting her for lunch that day. We were very close, but I knew what her wishes were. She'd said to me shortly before her death that if she died she wanted her organs to be used to help someone else to live. There was no questioning the decision.

"It has been a very painful time since then but I keep in touch with everyone who received her donated organs- heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and skin tissue- and sent a special letter last month to mark the fifth anniversary of Vicky's death keeping in touch with them.

"But I also know people whose lives have been transformed through transplants like those, and for me these was never any question mark over her organs being used."

She is determined to make a difference to the current situation.

" Retrieval teams for this area are currently London-based and there is such a small window of time. Kidneys are offered on a national basis and allocation procedures for other organs, such as livers, give priority for urgency of need. This can lead to them being transported from south to north. Speed is of the essence for successful non-heart beating transplants and I would like to see them offered on a county basis first, with a wide allocation if no match is found locally.

" There is also a lack of organ donations in this country. A league table has been done showing that the United Kingdom is fifth from the bottom in the transplant league. Way ahead of us are Spain, Belgium, USA, France, Portugal, Austria, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Germany and Canada," said Angela.

Another aspect is an economic factor, with the mounting cost of keeping patients on life-preserving treatment , such as dialysis in the cases of kidney failure, making significant inroads in hospital trust budgets.

Angela also wants to see a system where brain stem death testing is the norm- at present it is not always done consistently".

"There is also an urgent need to increase public awareness. It is absolutely no good to have millions of people signing up as donors, only to have their relatives countermand this. There needs to be more understanding of donation, and how essential it is. We need to up the family consent rate for donation to match that in other countries.

"Donation should be a usual part of the pattern of death, and relatives should be aware of wishes to donate," she said.

Lewisham Hospital handled then situation extremely sensitively for Angela, husband Bob, and extended family when Vicky was taken there from a volunteer centre where she had been discussing openings in India.

"That is how it should be for families of donors. I want to see a situation where families recognise the need to talk about being donors, so that everyone knows exactly what wishes are," she said.

A member of Western Sussex Hospitals' NHS Trust Board will also sit on the NHSBT regional committee and there will be clinical leads from hospitals.

"We need to get up to speed very quickly and to send a clear message out through many channels about the crisis in organ donation numbers.

"I will keep on pulling coat tails for whatever is necessary and will dig down deep for data and challenge when I am not satisfied with answers. I am going to make it happen," she warned.

Angela Fisher wth photographs of her daughter. W06156H10. Picture by Malcolm McCluskey.

Highlighting the acute need for organ donors