Fourteen years ago today, little Bailey Cowell, just nine days old, had a heart transplant. She lived for less than four more weeks. But her legacy lives on.
Bailey’s parents, Renee and Doug Cowell of the Chatham-Kent Police Service, began the green ribbon campaign a year later to increase awareness of the need for more people to sign up to donate their organs.
Chatham Mazda from Chatham Voice on Vimeo.
Renee Cowell and a gathering of green ribbon campaign partner group leaders met today to recognize National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week, which runs April 19-25.
Cowell said a person is five times more likely to need an organ transplant than to be an organ donor. She’d like to change those odds.
Hence the green ribbon campaign.
What began with three partnering groups – Chatham-Kent police and fire, as well as local EMS – has now expanded to include the health alliance, the municipality, the health unit, the Local Health Integrated Network, C-K Community Health Centres, and local branches of the Community Care Access Centre as well as the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Paula Schmidt of the Trillium Gift of Life Network, described the partnership as “amazing” and effective. She said the national average for donor participation among eligible adults is about 27%, where in Chatham-Kent that number jumps to 39%.
“Only the far north has a higher consent rate,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said when people register to be donors, it saves lives. That’s not always the case when a family loses a loved one and is approached to see if they’d consent to allow for the person’s organs to be donated to help other people. She said in only about half of these cases does the family say yes.
“We have the cure. We just simply don’t have enough organs to meet the demand,” she said.
In fact, there’s a waiting list of about 1,500 people waiting for a life-saving organ transplant.
Gary Conn, who on Saturday takes over as chief of police, called signing up to be an organ donor a “precious and priceless gift. One donor can give to eight others.”
He has seen the benefits of organ donation in his family, he said, as an uncle received a heart transplant 11 years ago.
Donald McLellan, general manager of Medavie EMS Ontario said paramedics grasp the need for more organ donors.
“We as frontline health professionals see the need and impact it makes,” he said. “We encourage people to sign up to be a donor.”
The Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, is a designated hospital in the Trillium Gift of Life Network, and in 2012 worked with the other local partners in launching a gift of life organ donation program.
Colin Patey, the alliance’s CEO, said the initial goal was to sign up 250 people. They reached that number in just three weeks.
“We quickly got to 500 and now we’re up to 1,000,” he said.
Cowell said the new goal is 1,500.
To help spread the word, the collaborative produced a video, which is available on YouTube.
To learn more and to sign up, visit beadonor.ca/ckha.
