Join the Organ Donor Register when picking up your prescription

People in Wales will now be able to join the Organ Donor Register when they visit their local pharmacy as part of the Donate Wales – Tell a Loved One campaign.

Registration leaflets and dispensers have been delivered to all 719 pharmacies in Wales including high street retailers and independent stores. As part of the campaign’s latest drive to make it even easier for those who want to help to join the Register, leaflets, dispensers and posters have also been delivered to more than 600 GP surgeries, opticians and dentistry practices across Wales. The leaflets have been delivered to mark Transplant Week, which starts today.

Launched in May, the Donate Wales – Tell a Loved One campaign, which is being led by the Kidney Wales Foundation and funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, aims to encourage more people to join the Organ Donor Register and to tell their friends and families about their donation wishes. This is because currently four in ten families refuse to allow their loved ones organs to be donated when asked often simply because they didn’t know what they would have wanted.

Since the launch of the campaign in May this year, another 12 people have been added to the waiting list in Wales for a transplant bringing the total figure to 487. Sadly because of the shortage of donors, 150 people have died in Wales in the last five years waiting for that second chance a transplant could have given them – many just young children. Minister for Health and Social services Edwina Hart visited a pharmacy in Cardiff to see first hand how the campaign was reaching people who wanted to pledge the gift of life.

For more about the ‘Tell a Loved One’ campaign, please visit:

http://new.wales.gov.uk/campaigns/more/archive/telllovedone/?lang=en