Enloe promoting organ donation

By LARRY MITCHELL-Staff Writer | CHICO ER


CHICO — Enloe Medical Center is about halfway through a successful campaign to encourage employees to register as organ and tissue donors.

The campaign started for hospital leaders on April 1 and then on July 1 was opened up to all hospital employees. It will run through the end of this month.

By Monday, 59 Enloe employees had registered as donors through the campaign.

"Enloe is absolutely amazing," said Sandy Andrada, project manager of the California Transplant Donor Network. "In this short amount of time, bringing in 59 (donors) is awesome."

The network is one of four organizations in California that work with hospitals to coordinate transplants. It is responsible for the northern and central parts of the state and also the Reno area.

Andrada said her organization has been conducting what it calls "eCampaigns" at hospitals and other work places, churches and civic organizations to boost the state's number of organ donors.

In these campaigns, she said, a special website is set up, as it was for Enloe, where people can register to be donors, and the number who sign up can be tracked.

Registering as donors "means people state they wish to donate their organs and tissue if they die, and it guarantees that their plans will be carried out," said Christina Chavira, a spokeswoman for Enloe.

"Currently in California, more than 21,000 individuals are awaiting transplant, over 120 just in Butte County alone," wrote Connie Rowe, Enloe's vice president of patient care services, in a phone message she left for all hospital employees. "Just one organ donor can save up to eight lives, and one tissue donor can improve the lives of up to 50 others."

Rowe launched the general campaign at Enloe on July 1 by sending out an email letting the staff know about the need for organs in California.

Each year from 2006 through 2010, Enloe has received an organ-donation award from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The hospital received the awards because a high percentage of its patients who could become organ donors actually became donors in those years.

Rowe said Enloe's leaders thought running the eCampaign would be a way to involve the staff in the hospital's organ-donation success.

"I've been real surprised," Rowe said. "I received phone calls and emails from staff saying how touched they were to be able to participate."

On its website reserved for hospital staff, Enloe posted stories of employees who became donors and others who benefited from organ donation.

In 2005, an organ and tissue registry, Donate Life California, was established to provide the state with an official list of people willing to be donors.

There are now nearly 8.5 million Californians on the list.

"That leaves us with about 28 million licensed drivers who haven't signed up yet on the registry," Andrada said.

The registry and the Department of Motor Vehicles work together. When people apply for driver's licenses or IDs or renew them, they are asked if they'd like to register as donors.