How to help save a life
By Ken Paxton, State Representative
The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) hosts an online organ donor registry to make it easier for Texans to register as organ, tissue and eye donors.
The Glenda Dawson Donate Life – Texas Registry, at www.DonateLifeTexas.org, has information about organ donation and instructions for registering online. Before this registry, there was no official state list in Texas of people who have given their consent for serving as donors. For those who register, the list can help ensure their wishes are granted posthumously.
One donor can save or enhance the lives of more than 50 people with gifts of organs, tissues and eyes. The Web-based registry helps streamline the donation process at a time when medical decisions and procedures must happen quickly.
Registration online takes less than five minutes. Donor information is protected, as only authorized organ procurement organizations and tissue and eye banks can access registrant information.
There is a critical shortage of organs available for transplants, with more than 96,000 individuals in the United States (including 7,000 people in Texas) waiting for life-saving organs. Every day 17 people die waiting for organ transplants.
The State's registry is named in memory of my friend and former colleague, State Representative Glenda Dawson, a kidney transplant recipient who championed the cause of organ donation. Representative Dawson passed away in 2006. The Texas Legislature mandated the creation of the statewide registry, which began Sept. 1, 2006, and subsequently stipulated that it be renamed in Dawson’s memory.
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