Yesterday was a landmark for altruistic kidney donation in Britain. Jeremy Laurance on the woman who started it all
Five years ago, Kay Mason, now 68, made medical history by becoming the first person in Britain to give a kidney to a stranger. Yesterday, the legal and social revolution that she triggered was marked by the announcement of the 100th altruistic living kidney donation in the UK.
Johan Stegers, 49, an electrician from Sussex, donated the organ at the Royal Free Hospital in London on 10 April. He does not know who it went to but said he was glad to help if he could. "Most people have got some decency in them, apart from judges and lawyers," he said.
The milestone shows how far attitudes have changed since reluctant blood donor Tony Hancock's protest – "Why, that's very nearly an armful" – on being asked for a whole pint in the 1960s sitcom.
The oldest altruistic donor is Nicholas Crace, 83, a retired charity director from Hampshire, and the youngest is Luc Delauzun, 26, a marketing executive in London.
The four donors came together yesterday at an event organised by the charity Give a Kidney – One's Enough, which seeks to raise awareness of altruistic donation.
If the public have overcome their squeamishness about blood donation, they are not so ready to give away bits of their bodies – even after death. There are 7,000 people on the waiting list for a transplant, and 300 die each year before an organ becomes available. If 1 per cent of those who said they would be prepared to donate a kidney to a stranger did so, the waiting list would be wiped out more than four times over.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/kay-mason-how-one-womans-selfless-gesture-went-on-to-save-100-people-at-deaths-door-7827992.html
{Register to be an organ,eye and tissue donor. To learn how, www.donatelife.net or www.organdonor.gov}
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