This month has marked National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Month.
Several activities raised awareness throughout the province in April, including Green Shirt Day on April 7, in honour of Logan Boulet, whose legacy inspired almost 150,000 people across Canada to register as organ donors.
In addition to the awareness campaigns, the Government of Saskatchewan announced increased funding to support kidney health.
The 2024-25 budget includes an increase of over $2.5 million for kidney health and organ and tissue donation and transplant. This investment will support incremental positions within the St. Paul’s Hospital and Cameco Community Renal Health Centre dialysis units and the Regina and Saskatoon Organ Donation and Transplant Programs.
In addition, support is being provided to implement a new electronic deceased donor management program for the provincial organ and tissue donation teams.
Heath Minister Everett Hindley and Members of the Legislative Assembly were pleased to tour the Kidney Health Unit and speak with organ and tissue donation and transplant as well as Kidney Health program surgeons and staff at St. Paul’s Hospital.
“We celebrate the life-saving work of our organ transplant and donation physicians and health care teams by participating in activities that build awareness around organ and tissue donation and transplant,” Hindley said. “Registering your intent to be an organ and tissue donor or living donor is a generous decision. We encourage everyone over the age of 16 to talk to their loved ones about their intentions to become a donor and join our provincial registry.”
This year, Saskatchewan is also launching a new segment in the national ‘Great Actions Leave a Mark’ campaign. This campaign will showcase living organ donors, recipients and physicians from Saskatchewan, which will be featured on givelifesask.ca.
Saskatchewan Kidney Transplant Surgeon Dr. Mike Moser is featured in this year’s campaign.
“Living kidney donations are mostly now done with laparoscopic, or what’s known as keyhole surgery,” Dr. Moser said. “The optics are so much better for surgeons. You see everything on multiple high-definition screens, the instruments are very fine, and you get way better exposure compared with the foot-long incision that used to be required to remove a kidney. It’s a lot less pain and patients are typically in hospital for a couple days before they are good to go home and are back to work within a few weeks.”
Two Saskatchewan residents also featured in this campaign include Kyle Deck and Jenna Lockert. Kyle received a life-saving kidney transplant from his sister Jenna in 2014.
“There’s nothing that I can do that could ever equate to what she did for me,” Deck said. “I remember driving to work and feeling so tired that I had to stop and let my partner drive. When I went to the hospital, I learned that my kidneys had completely shut down.”
Lockert advocates for living organ donation and is often asked why she became a donor.
“I think it is an unbelievable feeling and experience to know that you actually have the potential to save someone’s life, and this was my brother’s life that I was able to save and allow him to completely live a life again,” Lockert said. “I have regular checkups and ensure that I am healthy, and I continued to have another baby afterward. I would do it over and over again.”
Saskatchewan continues to see record growth in OTD rates and enrollments to the provincial OTD Registry.
The registry was launched in September 2020 and almost 30,000 eligible Saskatchewan residents have registered their intent to donate their organs and/or tissues, with almost 8,500 new donors registered in the last year.
In the 2022-23 fiscal year, Saskatchewan reported a record-breaking year for the number of deceased organ donations, with 30 total donors, a 76 percent increase from 2018-19. In 2023-24, the Saskatchewan Health Authority recorded 33 deceased donors, the highest number on record.
Anyone over the age of 16 is eligible to register their decision to be an organ and tissue donor and request information about the process of becoming a living organ donor through the Saskatchewan Organ and Tissue Donor Registry, available at www.givelifesask.ca.
