Organ donation: what about that?

1. How do you indicate that you want to be a donor?
By registering with the Donor Register. The Organ Donation Act was introduced in 1998. Then everyone aged 18 and older received a form from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. You could then fill in whether or not you gave permission for donation and if so, for which organs or tissues.

2. What is the role of next of kin?
In addition to yes or no, you can also indicate on the form that the next of kin decide. Or even that a specific person decides. If you do not register anything, the decision will fall to the next of kin. Especially when the subject has never been discussed, it is very difficult for relatives to estimate what the deceased would have wanted.

3. How do you know what you have entered on the form?
You can not only register on donorregister.nl, but you can also view or change your own registration. You need a DigiD for the online donor form. You can also request written confirmation from the Donor Register. The Donor Register can be reached by telephone on 0900-821 21 66.

4. Can anyone be a donor?
Almost everyone, regardless of age, weight, medication or illness. Only after death does the doctor determine whether someone is suitable as a donor. People who are infected with, for example, the HIV virus usually cannot be donors. The able-bodied may not record their will, nor may third parties such as parents or curator do this for them. The will is only legally valid if the choice about organ donation has been made before the person became mentally incapacitated.

5. Can only people who die in hospital be donors?
New. Donating tissues is always possible, regardless of whether someone dies at home, in the hospital or elsewhere. However, organ donation is only possible if the donor dies in the intensive care unit of a hospital, for example as a result of a brain haemorrhage, a brain tumor or a traffic accident. Two doctors then determine – independently of each other – ‘brain death’. Until the moment of organ removal, the deceased is artificially ventilated. This is often difficult for the next of kin, because it seems as if the deceased is simply sleeping.

In practice, only 1 in 10,000 people who have registered dies under the right circumstances to donate organs. That is why it is important that as many people as possible say ‘Yes’.

6. Does being a donor affect the burial or cremation?
New. The deceased can be laid out normally. Burial or cremation can take place at the desired time.

7. For whom are the donor organs and tissues intended?
In patients with an incurable disease of the heart, small intestine, liver, lungs, pancreas or kidneys, a donor organ can mean the difference between life and death. People with bad heart valves are helped with good donor valves. Skin tissue is used as a ‘biological dressing’ in people with burns. Corneal transplants are performed in patients who are visually impaired due to a cloudy cornea. In people with a bone tumor, amputation is sometimes not necessary thanks to bone tissue from a donor. And in the elderly, bone tissue is often used to firmly fix loose artificial joints.

8. Are there enough donors?
New. Of the more than 5.6 million registered, 60 percent have indicated that they want to be a donor, slightly more than a quarter (28 percent) do not want to and the rest leave it to the next of kin. Unfortunately, there will never be enough donors to help all the people on the waiting list. At the moment there is a long waiting list for corneas and almost all organs.

More information can be found at jaofnee.nl and at the Dutch Transplantation Foundation. The Donor form is available from the general practitioner, pharmacy, municipality and via donorregister.nl.