Sunday Times 2
Text messages to kidney donors
View(s):The Kidney Transplant Support Foundation (KTSF) in its latest bid to muster support for its campaign to encourage organ donors among Sri Lankans has launched an ‘sms’ campaign inviting millions of mobile phone users to register to donate their organs.
The campaign, the third of its projects, will be sending messages through all leading mobile operators – Mobitel, Dialog and Etisalat – in the country, through their databases.
Subscribers will be encouraged to visit www.ktsf.lk for live donations of their kidneys. For those who wish to register to donate their organs after death, arrangements will be made through the Human Tissue Bank website htb.mobitel.lk. KTFS previously had requested the Ministry of Transport and its departments including the department of Motor Traffic and the National Transport Medical Institute to insert an ‘Organ donor Symbol’ into all new and renewed driving licenses.
The effort, has brought in around 12,000 driving license owners to volunteer to donate their organs in the past two years. The campaign which initially started with banners displayed at the Motor Traffic Department is now issuing forms to get their consent. The forms are issued together with the application for the licences requesting their consent to donate their tissues in case of an accident. The tissues include kidney, eye, heart, liver, lungs, intestines and pancreas.
The KTSF said that out of every ten kidney patients eight kidney patients are dying without donor kidneys.