A 75-stop Ontario tour promoting organ and tissue donation is the next step for a Sarnia man who grabbed national attention in a 2004 cross-Canada trek.
Kristopher Knowles, 22, has bilaria atresia, a potentially fatal liver disease that often kills children before their second birthday.
At age 13, at the time on the wait list for a liver transplant, he walked in more than 200 cities and towns across Canada, trying to increase the number of people registered to donate.
“There's about 4,000 people right now on the waiting list,” he said Monday, back in Sarnia as part of the eighth Step by Step Campaign.
Knowles and Khaled Khatib carried the campaign's Torch of Life into town and presented it to staff at the Harbourfront Inn, where the group was staying before heading to Chatham for Tuesday.
Khatib is 20-year-old Palestinian who, along with his father in 2005, agreed to donate his 11-year-old brother's organs to five Israeli children after the brother was accidentally shot by an Israeli soldier.
The campaign's goal is to get five million people in Ontario signed up, said organizer George Macello. Right now there are 2.4 million.
Read more - VIDEO: http://www.theobserver.ca/2012/05/14/organ-donation-tour-stops-in-sarnia
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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