Alberta, tissue and organ donors

Alberta is looking for more people to become tissue and organ donors, and the province is also revamping the program for tissue and organ donations. Len Webber, the Calgary-Foothills MLA , introduced Bill 207 in March of 2013, and it passed in November of the same year. The goal of the act was to establish a single agency which would coordinate and facilitate tissue and organ donors an donations in the Alberta area. The passage of Bill 207, also known as the Human Issue and Organ Donation Amendment Act, made it much easier for Alberta residents to become tissue and organ donors. In the past registration clerks were not required to ask if a visitor to the counter wanted to become tissue and organ donors, but now these clerks are legally required by law to ask.

Association of Alberta Registries CEO Pamela Wilson explained “The legislation in Alberta requires that when you go to a registry office … the registry clerk will ask if you’re interested in registering your consent to be an organ donor. Those types of transactions are about eight million per year in the province of Alberta.” Tissue and organ donors are sorely needed in Alberta, and the registries do not have enough donors in the Alberta area to fill the need for donations each year. According to Wilson “44,000 doesn’t seem like a very big number, so we want to boost those numbers and get the total numbers of consent on file to be much higher. We know that the ask at the counter is having really good results — 60 to 70% of that 44,000 that have registered since July have registered because they were asked at the counter to register. They can donate their entire body to science if they want to, or they can donate any parts that are on the list. They can choose all of them or any combination there of.”