Organ donation. The subject is one that sparks strong opinions.
To share those ideas, residents are invited to attend the Kidney Foundation's Prince George Community Conversation Sunday at the Coast Inn of the North from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. to talk organ donation and what the barriers and challenges might be for a potential donor.
In Prince George there are 85 people who require a life-enhancing or life-saving kidney transplant, and 8,500 local residents have chronic kidney disease.
The Kidney Foundation of BC has a provincial donor registration rate of 19 per cent and Prince George has a 24 per cent donor registration rate.
"I would like to think that being out in the community like we have been over the last few years has resulted in a bit of awareness," said Diane Duperron, Prince George Chapter of the BC Kidney Foundation past president, talking about the higher-than-provincial-average donor registration.
The goal for the province is to reach 50 per cent registration rate, giving those in need of an organ transplant a fighting chance.
In B.C., of the 504 people waiting for organ transplant, 400 of those need a kidney and between 30 to 40 per cent of Canadians waiting for a kidney never get one. In B.C. the average wait time is 4.8 years to get a kidney, the longest in the nation.
Guest speaker at the Community Conversation, Brenda Leclerc from Quesnel, has been on the waiting list for seven years and is asking guests at the Sunday afternoon meeting to offer ideas on how to increase kidney transplants in our community by getting more people to register as donors.
Kidney disease is known as the silent killer because most people don't have symptoms until 80 per cent of kidney function is lost, making it almost impossible to treat effectively at that stage.
"The whole idea is to get people to be organ donors," said Paul Duperron, kidney transplant recipient and longtime member of the kidney foundation. "And to see if there are other ideas to get people to register - maybe we could create challenges to different cities."
The local Kidney Foundation chapter wants to know what the barriers are and get solutions.
"We know there are religious and cultural barriers," said Diane Duperron. "But there are some misconceptions as well. There are 51 per cent of people in the province who think they are registered donors because you used to do it on your driver's license, but that's no longer in effect because since 1997 you've had to be on the organ donor registry, so people who did this on their driver's license 20 years ago think they are still registered. And that's not the case."
To become a registered donor, or to check if you are, visit transplant.bc.ca.
Everyone is welcome to attend the Prince George Community Conversation.
