Madam Chair, I would like every member of the House to think about someone they love. Think of what it would be like if that person's kidneys failed, or if a congenital defect was found in his or her heart. That kind of bad news is delivered to a Canadian home too often.
Let me tell members a story of one of our colleagues here on the Hill.
In 2005, Garry Keller dropped 40 pounds without even trying. He was always tired, lethargic and when he woke up in the morning, he felt like he had already worked a 15-hour day. He was exhausted, but in reality his kidneys were already failing.
In May of that year, he was getting ready for work one morning when he almost passed out in the shower. That was a sign that he needed to see a doctor. He had some blood work done and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with kidney failure.
What was the likely cause? As a child he often suffered from bouts of strep throat. Doctors hypothesized that over a long period of time these strep infections eventually caused long-term damage to his kidneys. Overnight, his world changed.
Following the visit to the doctor, he required an immediate blood transfusion and hemodialysis, which was done at the hospital through arteries and veins. Within three months, he was able to switch to peritoneal dialysis after being trained by the great and professional team of doctors and nurses at the Home Dialysis Clinic at the Ottawa Hospital.
Since September 2005, he has been on dialysis every day for nine hours each night while sleeps. Due to great health management, he has also been able to work and maintain a full life during that time and has served in a number of roles, including chief of staff to two ministers in three portfolios. More important, he was able to marry his beautiful, strong and supportive wife, Anna, whom he loves dearly.
His doctors told him that he would eventually need a kidney transplant. If that was not bad enough news, he was also informed that due to his rare blood type, B, his wait might be longer than the average of four years in Ottawa and eastern Ontario. They were right. He has been on a waiting list for over six years.
As an only child, his family is small. While some family and friends offered to be donors, they were all disqualified due to familial histories of diabetes or other ailments such as high blood pressure. While dialysis has kept him relatively healthy, he has always known that it was not a permanent solution. The only solution was to have a kidney transplant.
After a recent health scare put him in the hospital for two days, doctors stressed, in a follow-up appointment, that the risk to long-term damage to his other organs and blood vessels would increase significantly the longer he remained on dialysis. They told him to reach out to friends, family and acquaintances to see if someone would step up to be a living donor.
Last week he took their advice and the response has been overwhelming. Not only have friends and acquaintances from across Ottawa responded to his call, but in some cases, complete strangers from across Canada have inquired about how they could be a donor.
In order to find a donor, he had to go as public as possible. The good news is that in addition to a number of people stepping forward considering to be donors, his situation has brought attention to the need for greater organ donation across Canada, both through living heroes as well as Canadians signing up to be organ donors if the unthinkable happened to them.
For Garry, hopefully there will be good news. However, for far too many, the good news will never come. There are far more people in need of donated organs in the country than there are donors.
The human body is a complicated piece of machinery made up of many parts. Our lives depend on many individual vital organs working together to keep us healthy. The failure of any one of these organs can cause serious harm to our health and even cause death. When an organ fails, there is always the hope that a donated one can be found. They can come from a person whose life could not be saved, or from a living donor.
We have a responsibility to make Canadians aware of just how great the need is for many organs. There is always a need for kidneys, livers, lungs and hearts for transplants, to name just a few. We have to demonstrate how donated organs save lives and change lives.
Although health care, and specifically organ donations and transplants, fall under provincial and territorial jurisdiction, we all have a role to play. The Government of Canada regulates safety issues around organ donations and transplants so that these operations are as effective and safe as possible.
The federal, provincial and territorial governments have contributed to a $35 million fund to establish a coordinated national organ donor registration and allocation system. Money is also being spent to support best practices, and to educate and raise public awareness. Canadians are very aware of the need for organ transplants.
Nonetheless the shortage of suitable donors is still the greatest obstacle. There are long waiting lists for every major organ and for some they can be waiting for years. It is encouraging to note that advances in medical science are allowing more Canadians with organ failure to live longer. However, this is also contributing to the increase in demand for donated organs.
Part of the challenge in organ transplantation is not simply the lack of donors, it is the fact that not all potential donors are suitable matches for those in need of an organ. In order for a transplant to be successful, organ donors need to match on a wide range of clinical factors. For starters, they have to be the right blood type and have the right size organ for a person on the waiting list.
Organs transplants are not always possible due to the poor health of some potential recipients. Many—if not most—recipients have an underlying illness forcing them go on a waiting list. Before a patient can receive an organ, the patient’s doctor has to determine how serious the illness is and how long the patient has been on a waiting list. In order to ensure greater compatibility between donor and recipient, the pool of potential donors must be increased.
To do that, we have to make Canadians aware of the shortages and we have to get more people to sign their organ donor cards. Live donation is also an option in some cases. For example, we are born with two kidneys, but we can live a very healthy life with just one. Therefore, kidney transplants from live donors have been growing in recent years.
In the last 20 years, the number of live donors has doubled. The number of live donors, both related and unrelated to the recipients, has steadily increased in Canada for kidney, liver and single lung transplants. However, by far the most common live donation is of a kidney.
Advances in medical science are also helping to make it possible to use organs from older donors who in the past may not have been considered suitable donors. As well, we are finding that many older donors are suitable if they have kept themselves in good physical condition.
A single donor who is in good health has the potential to donate a heart, liver, two lungs, two kidneys, a pancreas and bowel to a number of different recipients. However, in reality, that is not always the case. Nonetheless, the number of multiple organ donations from a single donor has been steadily increasing.
Recent statistics show the number of transplants every year is roughly double the number of donors. The generosity of those who selflessly donate cannot be overstated. However, more work needs to be done to raise awareness of this issue and how Canadians can help.
To drive home just how important an issue this is, we need only to remember that roughly 200 people die every year waiting for an organ transplant. In other words, 200 lives could be saved every year if we could find a matching donor. As I mentioned, the provinces and territories are largely responsible for delivering health care, including organ and tissue donation and transplantation.
There have been many important initiatives across the country and I would like to acknowledge a few of them to give the House a sense of the great work that is being done.
In Manitoba, for example, the province is funding a team of hospital-based specialists in organ donation. That team is part of a Manitoba strategy to increase overall donation by more than 20%.
In Ontario there is a new online donor registration system that is proving to be very successful. BeADonor.ca is a new online registration system for donors and it is the first of its kind. It takes three minutes to register as an organ donor and those three minutes could save the lives of up to eight people.
A new national program called the living donor paired exchange registry is also helping to match donors with recipients and give new hope to people living with chronic kidney disease. The registry is a partnership between Canadian Blood Services and kidney transplant programs across the country. It was launched as a three province pilot in January 2009, but continued to expand to other provinces. With Quebec's enrolment in October 2010, it became a Canada-wide registry.
The registry recently passed an important milestone. It made its 100th match between a living donor and a recipient.