If there's a small up­side to the run­away vi­o­lence in Trinidad and To­ba­go in which mur­ders have topped 300 in on­ly 242 days this year, (read lat­est mur­der/sui­cide on page 5) it is that one such fa­tal shoot­ing end­ed up sav­ing two oth­er lives. A man had been fa­tal­ly shot once to the head but there was no dam­age to his in­ter­nal or­gans. His kid­neys were even­tu­al­ly do­nat­ed to pa­tients in dire need of the or­gans.

The dead donor ef­fec­tive­ly saved two lives and his fam­i­ly in the midst of their own grief found so­lace in the fact that their rel­a­tive was able to live on in oth­ers.

This was a first­hand ex­am­ple that pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov yes­ter­day gave to the T&T Guardian to bol­ster his view that there must be "ab­solute­ly" more or­gan donors in this coun­try.

In re­sponse to con­cerns that peo­ple could be tar­get­ed for their or­gans the Min­istry of Health's Na­tion­al Or­gan Trans­plant Unit (NO­TU) stat­ed it must be not­ed that it is il­le­gal to sell or­gans in this coun­try.

Re­cip­i­ents for kid­neys from dead donors are cho­sen through a match­ing sys­tem which se­lects and match­es peo­ple based on com­pat­i­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria.

"This in­cludes blood group, or­gan size, serol­o­gy sta­tus, ur­gency and wait­ing time," the NO­TU stat­ed.

Recog­nis­ing that it may be pos­si­ble for rich, or bet­ter con­nect­ed peo­ple, to en­joy greater ac­cess to do­nat­ed or­gans than oth­ers, NO­TU said "a per­son's wealth can­not sway or im­pact the even­tu­al de­ci­sion."

Guardian cam­paign

Guardian Me­dia Ltd on Sun­day launched a cam­paign to pro­mote pub­lic aware­ness of or­gan do­na­tion and trans­plant with the aim of en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to aug­ment this coun­try's donor pool.

The NO­TU has been in op­er­a­tion since 2006 and has done 155 kid­ney trans­plants in this coun­try.

Twen­ty-six peo­ple have re­ceived kid­neys from dead donors.

There are 101 peo­ple on the NO­TU'S wait­ing list.

Many oth­ers have en­quired about be­ing on the donor wait­ing lo­gis­tics but have not sup­plied all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500 na­tion­als are in need of kid­ney trans­plants and that num­ber grows by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 every year with a "very large num­ber" of peo­ple dy­ing an­nu­al­ly while wait­ing.

Alexan­drov said di­a­betes is one of the main dis­eases af­fect­ing this coun­try and kid­ney prob­lems is one of the is­sues that aris­es out of this.

As a re­sult of this, he said, more donors need to come for­ward.

"It has not been very of­ten I have been in­volved in sign­ing the con­sent forms for donors be­cause for what­ev­er rea­son. I be­lieve the moral ob­sta­cles of fam­i­ly mem­bers need to be over­come," Alexan­drov said.

"There is the is­sue of pro­pa­gan­da which may cause peo­ple not to un­der­stand what or­gan do­na­tion en­tails. But peo­ple need to un­der­stand ex­act­ly how im­por­tant it is to be­come donors," he said.

Re­li­gious and bur­ial cus­toms

Re­li­gion and bur­ial rites and cus­toms are an of­ten un­seen as­pect of or­gan do­na­tion. The NO­TU said one con­cern that peo­ple tend to raise is the ques­tion of whether do­na­tion would dis­fig­ure their bod­ies and pre­vent an open cas­ket fu­ner­al if they de­cide to be­come a donor.

The NO­TU stat­ed that or­gan do­na­tion is "sim­i­lar to surgery".

"There will be no dis­fig­ure­ment to a donor's body. Like surgery, all in­ci­sions are closed, and you can have an open cas­ket," the NO­TU stat­ed.

Head of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Bro Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj said he had "no ob­jec­tion" with in­di­vid­u­als do­nat­ing their or­gans.

Ma­haraj said how­ev­er it must be an in­di­vid­ual de­ci­sion.

"Some peo­ple be­lieve that every part of their body should be used and even when they die I know there are peo­ple who would tell their re­la­tions that if peo­ple want my kid­ney it should be used. It is a per­son­al de­ci­sion," Ma­haraj said.

"We know it is some­thing that is very im­por­tant. In Hin­duism in par­tic­u­lar they be­lieve in kar­ma or good ac­tion and if you could even do a good ac­tion when you die then it would be a very ben­e­fi­cial thing," he said.

"I have ab­solute­ly no ob­jec­tion to or­gan do­na­tion. If the per­son is alive it has, of course, to be their con­scious wish. It should not be some­thing that is forced about a per­son. And if that per­son al­so has the wish that if they pass on and their or­gans are in­tact and they want to do­nate it then it should al­so be done. I have no prob­lem with that," he said.

Ma­haraj said a ben­e­fit for peo­ple con­sid­er­ing or­gan do­na­tion is that it may ac­tu­al­ly en­cour­age peo­ple to live a health­i­er lifestyle.