Direct appeals will get more organ donors
Sir – “Presumed consent” is a horrific concept (report, Issue 860). The way to increase the number of organ donors appears obvious: just make it easier.
I would like to become an organ donor. I asked in our local post office, but it had no idea how to go about it. I receive tons of junk mail, but not a single item about organ donation. The checkout at the supermarket is laden with impulse buys, but no donor cards. I give blood, but not even the blood transfusion service has suggested I donate my organs, too.
Put donor cards in front of people, instead of making it hard work.
Tony Blighe,
Clatford, Hampshire
Sir – My brother has been waiting four years for a kidney transplant; it has been a terrible four years for him and for me.
I could not donate as he needs blood group A or O and I am AB. I see him suffering week in, week out, day in, day out. He has three trips a week to dialysis, which involves two needles in the same arm in the same place for four hours - half the day gone. He follows a strict diet, with only one litre of water a day - if he exceeds that amount he is very sick after dialysis.
That’s without infections and peritonitis, then depression and the hopelessness of it all. This country is a disgrace where kidney patients are concerned. People are made aware of cancer, heart surgery, Aids, Alzheimer’s, but nothing is highlighted about what kidney patients go through. If I could take my brother abroad to buy a kidney,
I most certainly would.
Eileen Dunkley,
Stamford, Lincolnshire
Sir – It is important the public do not imagine presumed consent means they will be forced to donate their organs. They will be given the opportunity to record their dissent and this will be respected.
There are more than 6,480 patients in Britain on dialysis waiting anxiously, year after year, for the transplant call that never comes. It is time to follow in the footsteps of the more enlightened western European countries and introduce “presumed consent” legislation, in a genuine effort to increase the pool of donor organs for transplantation.
This would also enable a more sensitive and positive approach to be made to the relatives of the deceased by doctors and transplant co-ordinators, which would remove from them the burden of having to make a life-saving decision at a traumatic time. Most importantly, it would ensure that the wishes of the dead are respected, while saving the lives of many of the hundreds of patients currently living under sentence of death.
Elizabeth Ward,
British Kidney Patient Association,
Bordon, Hampshire
Sir – I note that Gordon Brown has come out in favour of “opt out”.
Is that so the Government can lose your details when you are alive and when you are dead?
Mike Bridgeman,
Devizes, Wiltshire
I’d like my care to be more intensive
Sir - So now we are being promised healthcare checkups at the doctor’s surgery. Please tell the Prime Minister that I would prefer to be able to get an appointment to see my own doctor (rather than a locum), to be able to get that appointment within the same week, and also for my local hospital to stop repeatedly cancelling my appointments. (And I’d like an NHS dentist).
But maybe that’s just being old fashioned.
Steve Ashworth,
Ruthwell Station, Dumfries Dashed hopes
Sir - I am a Kenyan citizen living in the US. Much of the Western media coverage is focused on tribalism ('Kenya’s nightmare’, Issue 859).
Yes, there is that element, but let us not forget that the last President, Daniel arap Moi, was in power for almost thirty years over what was known as a very corrupt regime.
Now under his successor, Mwai Kibaki, our economy has improved, but there is still a huge impoverished population not to mention rampant unemployment.
For the vast majority of the population there is no unemployment benefit to return to, unlike in some societies in which corruption (which is not a phenomenon unique to low-income countries) occurs.
Events of the election ignited latent frustrations. It is not the irregularities of the election itself but rather the blatancy in which they happened that stings and is hard to take.
There had been hope of a brighter future. Pride in being part of one of Africa’s freer societies - but that hope was snatched away. That is what is hard to take, the manifestation of which is being read in newspapers and viewed on televisions around the world.
William A. Nyikuli,
Maryland, USA Stonewalled
Sir - Let me see if I am understanding this correctly. The Government can spend billions on saving Northern Rock and the deposits of its investors. It can spend further billions on safeguarding the pensions of those who belonged to failed private company pension schemes.
It cannot however 'afford’ to spend a few million on index-linking the UK state pensions of those living in, mainly Commonwealth countries. This, despite them having paid into the state scheme throughout their entire working lifetimes and the fact that many are still UK taxpayers!
But then I never was very good at understanding why some politicians simply forget their promises 'to right wrongs and bring about changes’ once they have been (re-)elected.
Keith Atkins,
Johannesburg, South Africa Terminal boredom
Sir - It would seem that in the
opinion of Gavin Fullen (' 'Tis the season to be leaving’, Issue 858) the 'decent people’ are leaving the UK foDown Under.
I am one of the 25 per cent who went to Australia yet found it lacking. I spent 23 years in various parts and came back at the earliest practical opportunity to escape a lingering death caused by the terminal boredom. Presumably in Mr Fullen’s opinion I am 'indecent’.
If the gentleman thinks he is going to a land free of street crime he has a sad shock coming.
Bill Makin,
Melton Mowbray, Leics Hung up
Sir - You report that the rudeness of English callers is causing ill-health among call centre employees in India (Issue 859).
Has anybody researched the
terrible stress suffered by the British in dealing with the centres’ canned responses and total inability to deal with any issue not covered by their by-rote training?
Michael West,
Eastleigh, Hampshire Sing up
Sir - After one year at school in Australia my eight-year-old daughter is word perfect on the national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.
After over two years at school in the UK she did not know the first line of our national anthem.
Australia is a multicultural society that isn’t afraid to celebrate it’s patriotism, so why are we?
M. Davies,
Sydney, Australia Rats for tea
Sir - We read with some trepidation of Heather Mills McCartney’s
suggestion (Issue 853) that, as a planet saving exercise, rats should be considered as a source of milk.
European rats are so small - do we need to keep, say, 10 rats to provide milk for a cup of tea? Is crème brûlée a thing of the past? News of the Giant Rat of New Guinea (Issue 857) gives us great optimism.
Beryl Elmitt,
Knysna, South Africa Who's barking now
Sir - Surely the only question here is why it has taken so long for the
British police to grasp the fact that German shepherd dogs should be addressed in German? (report,
In Brief, Issue 860)
The dogs evidently know that already, so they would not seem to be the ones that are barking.
Peter Hofschröer,
Gaishorn am See, Austria Remembering Hillary
Sir – My memory of Edmund
Hillary climbing Everest is still very vivid. We were attending a midnight matinee at the Strand Theatre in London the night before the coronation, when suddenly the show was stopped and the impresario Jack De Leon, came on stage to announce the news of the conquest of Everest.
The feat says much about Hillary himself when the only person actually filmed on the summit was Sherpa Tensing Norgay, taken by Hillary; he did not bother to hand the camera to Norgay to film him there.
Edna Weiss,
London NW11 We appreciate your letters. Keep them coming and keep them short! Letters to the Editor, Weekly Telegraph, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London,
SW1W ODT.
Email: weeklyt@telegraph.co.uk |
Direct appeals will get more organ donors
