health

Why Australia needs opt out organ donation.

‘Opt out organ donation just makes sense’.

Today Show Newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys has made a strong case for an opt out organ donation system in Australia after meeting a 5-year-old Sydney girl who will need a heart transplant in the future.

Eva Pym is five years old. She suffers from a rare chromosomal heart condition that means her heart is too big for her body. She was born with it and, unfortunately, unless she recieves a transplant, her heart will one day give up on her.

Eva.

But here’s the cruel catch that a lot of people in need of an organ transplant know: she can’t get on the waiting list until her heart condition deteriorates further.

And getting on the transplant list does not gurantee hope for little Eva.

“Kids with similar heart conditions have died waiting for a transplant” her father Daniel told the Today show.

So what can be done? Her parents Daniel and Katherine Pym, along with the host’s of the Today show believe that an opt out organ donation system would work better than the current opt in system.

“It’s too hard to figure out if you need it on your driver’s license or if you need to register or if your family needs to make a decision on your deathbed,” Eva’s dad Daniel Pym told Jeffreys.

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“We need to do something better to have a big change in the result so that 24 million Australians don’t need to jump on the internet and opt-in.”

Watch them speak about it here:

Video via Today

Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson agreed with Jeffreys.

“[An opt-out system] only shifts the duty of registering online from the vast majority of Australians who want to donate, which is about 80 percent, to the very small minority, it just makes sense.”

We couldn’t agree more. There are over 1600 Australians on the organ and tissue waiting list at any given time. That’s not including adults and kids like Eva who need to be on the list and aren’t yet classified as ‘sick enough’. Currently only 16 people out of every million Australians donate their organs.

Something needs to be done- and an opt out system seems like the best idea. Afterall – there is no pressure, just more lives saved.