KayleneHong
Monday, February 01, 2010
Sitting on her mother's lap and smiling shyly as she speaks of her dream to become a teacher, softly-spoken seven-year-old Chan Lai-hung looks like any other little girl.
The only thing that betrays what she has been through are the scars - left behind by countless injections to keep her alive.
Little Lai-hung became Hong Kong's youngest recipient of a transplant after getting a new heart last year. She was one of the transplant recipients present at a ceremony held yesterday by the Hong Kong Society of Transplantation to thank the organ donors and their families for giving them a new lease of life.
The plucky youngster was diagnosed with the rare syndrome of dilated cardiomyopathy when she was five, which led to heart failure.
By the end of 2008, the little girl lay bedridden in hospital, with her life dependent on cardiac stimulant drugs: "I felt so heartbroken looking at my daughter suffering and with so many tubes attached to her.
"Her hand almost had no space left to inject any more tubes," said her mother Andy Hui Hiu-yung.
The number of organ transplants hit a record high last year with 141 heart, lung, liver and kidney patients getting new organs.
"There has been a gradual improvement in attitudes towards organ donation. The culture has changed, with people perhaps not so insistent that the body of the deceased must be intact in death," said president of the Society of Transplantation, Philip Li Kam-tao.
Transplant coordinator Tong Yuen-fan bore testimony to this, saying that 11 years ago, organ donation was a taboo subject.
"In 1998, when I first started my job, I remember a family member who punched a doctor as he tried to persuade another family to donate the organs of the deceased," she said.
"But now, family members are more open about this topic."
Tong is one of seven transplant coordinators serving public hospitals in Hong Kong.
Li also attributed the new rise in figures of organ transplants to structural improvements.
"Hospitals are now seeing more transplant coordinators, with two new staff recruited last year. Now there is one transplant coordinator serving each cluster of hospitals," he said.
Hospital Authority chief executive Shane Solomon pointed out that while celebrating the success of last year, there was still a lot of work to be done because the waiting list for organ transplants stands at around 1,700.
"I am very grateful to the parents of the deceased who donated the heart to my daughter. They not only saved my daughter, they saved my whole family," said Hui.
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