Did you know that the Ontario Government has a website that will allow Ontarians to register as organ donors online? The website is www.beadonor.ca
More than 1500 residents are on the wait list for organ and tissue donations and by September of 2011 there were 399 transplants done in Ontario alone. Statistics vary across the province; 44 percent of the people in the London and Sudbury areas have registered to donate compared to only 13 percent in Toronto. Province wide though, less than 20 percent of people are registered to donate.
When you go online to www.beadonor.ca you can select whether you want to donate all of your organs or you can select specific organs you would like to donate. Being a donor can save 8 lives and enhance 75 more. I’m registered as a donor. Nothing would please me more than to help the life of a child. Something that has always been a consolation to me is that my sister Beverley was a donor and I believe that a part of her is still helping someone today.
Some people worry that if they donate their organs it will mean that they can’t have the same funeral as they would have had, but that is not true. You can still have the same funeral with an open casket if that was your choice. You have all attended funerals before of friends and family who have donated organs and unless someone told you, then you wouldn’t have known.
