Saturday, September 03, 2011

Heart and soul

Spain has a proud record on organ donations. Although donations fell a little in 2010 (1502 donors and 3,770 transplants) from the all time record of 1605 donors in 2009 Spain still tops the Worldwide list of donors and donations. Based on the donations per million inhabitants it's Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, The United States, France, Austria and Italy. Their main methodology here seems to be to talk to families after someone has died rather than to rely on donor registers.

Nonetheless, there is a donor register and I signed up for it on the Internet last week. That's why I'm telling you this as my donor card arrived today. The card has no legal validity, it just indicates to my family that if there is any part of my poor and degraded body that may be useful to someone else I'd like them to have it. Just one thing: please get someone to check that I'm dead first!

So now you know

1 comment:

  1. I once tried to donate blood in Spain and (as I expected, because I thought I had read it somewhere) I was politely rejected. Why? Simple because I am a Brit it can't be risked because of CJD. So no free biscuits and I got to keep my 'whole armful' I was tempted to update 'The Blood Donor' sketch.

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