By Jihaan Opperman
When someone passes away, their healthy organs and tissues get buried or cremated while thousands of people wait for a life-changing transplant. Vitanova offers the public an opportunity to give someone hope, and ultimately a new life by becoming a tissue or organ donor at the time of death.
“The Vitanova Tissue Bank is a non-profit organisation aiming to source and recover human tissue from deceased donors in order to save patients’ lives”, says Sandra Venter, Recovery & Awareness Manager at Vitanova.
Tissue that can be donated is corneas, bones, tendons and ligaments, skin as well as heart valves. It is used to save burn victims’ lives, restore sight, avoid amputation, improve mobility and prolong life. While potential tissue donors are thoroughly screened for safety purposes, donated tissue does not have to be matched to a recipient, so anyone can donate to anyone.
During October, Vitanova visited various of our blood donation clinics to drive their donor awareness campaign. This campaign aims to increase awareness about human tissue transplants and recruit donors so that more people can be helped through transplants. During the month they were able to register 100 new tissue donors. “We aim to increase conversation and ultimately increase donor numbers so that more people can be helped through tissue transplants”, Sandra added. We also collaborated with Vitanova last year mid-September. If you missed our previous article and want to read up on the success you can find it here.
We assist further, by performing all the Nucleic Acid Tests (NAT) and other additional screening tests for the Vitanova femoral head donation programme. For more information about this programme, you can click here.
The registration process is quick and easy. For more information about tissue donation, you can contact Vitanova on 087 068 8000. Alternatively, you can register by clicking here.
