Thursday 2 February 2012

Welsh Supremacy in Kidney law

It makes me warm inside to think of Wales pioneering their way forward in the UK as regards laws about organ donation. I sometimes hide the fact that I'm all of 1/16 Welsh, but today I'll say it loud and proud: Rwy'n dy garu di, Wales.

Little Wales is moving to an opt-out system where everyone will be on a organ donation register unless they've said they do NOT want to be. It presumes consent unless told otherwise.

Already, Wales has shown that it's full of a mature bunch of citizens with donation rates of just under 30 per million deceased, far beating those of England (only just over half that), France (around 24/1m), Italy (21/m) and Belgium (20.5/m).

And, for those who have always poked fun at the Welsh, you should understand that there are no boundaries to where the kidneys donated by Welsh could go, so that people needing transplants in England will likely be receiving Welsh kidneys by the time this law comes into effect in 2015.

If England doesn't catch up soon, therefore, there'll be 1000s of us turning partly Welsh every year. Now I'm delighted, even proud, especially on this particular day, to know this. For those of you who find this strange, well there's only one thing to do about it - join the opt-out campaign for the whole of the UK. I'm just saying...

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