NHS National Organ Donation Week 2021: 20th – 26th September

Union Matters, Health & Safety

Sam and Ken


Once again this year, the CWU is supporting the NHS’s Blood & Transplant National Organ Donation Week, the annual support and awareness-raising campaign aimed at helping our National Health Service save lives.

“Every day the nation needs donors to help those in desperate need of a transplant,” says CWU national health, safety & environment officer Dave Joyce “and we want to help the NHS promote the positive nature of organ donation and to ask more people to join the Organ Donor Register, telling their families that they want to donate.

Although the law in this country has either changed or is in the process of changing from ‘opt-in’ to ‘opt-out’ – different parts of the UK being at different stages at this time – the NHS continues to place a high value on the Donor Register.

“It’s extremely helpful when medical professionals are having these conversations with grieving families at an exceptionally sad time for them,” Dave explained, adding that organ donation is now “gradually starting to move towards becoming a normal and expected part of end-of-life care.”

Campaigning, increasing support and raising awareness have contributed to increasing the amount of organ donation by more than 50 per cent over the past decade, a figure which is expected to increase further with the full effect of the recent changes to the law and this is something which Dave Joyce welcomes, saying: “It’s also personal to me – my niece Patsy died aged just 23 whilst she was awaiting a heart and lung transplant that never came in time for her.”

Living donations are also a vital part of this campaign, and something which the NHS intends to focus a growing amount of its campaigning efforts on, and which is being featured on the NHS Blood & Transplant website as a series of true-life stories, each one from a living donor giving a personal account. 

Within the CWU, Ken Woolley is one such living donor, having given a kidney to his son 10 years ago.

“Back in 2011, Sam was on peritoneal dialysis for 10 hours every day,” explains the NEC and T&FSE member, “and so when I discovered that I could donate one of my kidneys to him, we both decided to have the operations.

“The operations were successful and he hasn’t looked back since. Now he’s a 27-year-old man, working full time and healthy. I’m so glad I was able to help him and that the CWU supports this campaign.”