Thank you very much for this opportunity.
My name is Leanne Appleton. I am the provincial executive director for B.C. Transplant, the organization with a provincial mandate for leadership and governance of organ donation and transplantation here in British Columbia. We are a part of the Provincial Health Services Authority.
Increasing organ donation is one of our key strategic goals, and we continue to build the infrastructure necessary to maximize organ donation potential from both a clinical and a public perspective. We've taken a multipronged and clinical systems approach to achieve this, based on what is globally recognized as best practice for increasing organ donation and aligned with national leading practices led by Canadian Blood Services.
B.C. started over two decades ago by establishing a strong foundation with two key elements. The first is mandatory referral legislation, which mandates all deaths or impending deaths in hospital to be referred to B.C. Transplant for consideration for organ or tissue donation. This type of legislation is viewed broadly as a key factor that contributes to higher donation rates.
The second element is the organ donor registry, now in its 20th year, which was the first in Canada, and the first to offer residents the ability to register completely online. It provides a legal record of a person's organ donation decision—yes or no—and is tied to a person's personal health number. It enables our organ donation team to share the decision with the family of a potential organ donor. This can help ease the burden of making a decision in a tragic moment.
With these foundational pieces in play, over the last few years we've focused on implementing other system components that are recognized nationally and internationally as fundamental and best practice for high donation performance.
My colleague Edward Ferre, B.C. Transplant's provincial operations director, will now speak to this.