UK Transplant Center Honors Organ Donors in Flag Ceremony
LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 19, 2022) — UK HealthCare celebrated organ and tissue donors and recipients Monday, April 18 by raising the Donate Life flag in front of the hospital. UK Chandler Hospital is one of several Kentucky hospitals and organizations promoting organ and tissue donation awareness by flying or displaying the flags during April which is National Donate Life Month.
The flag was raised at 10:08 a.m. to signify that one organ donor can save eight lives. A one minute and six second moment of silence was observed to honor the 106,000 people in the United States who are on the waiting list for a life-saving organ
Kentucky’s flag-flying campaign is part of a national effort to bolster organ donor registries in April. In addition to honoring donor families and transplant recipients by flying the Donate Life flag, hospital staff members are using the flags to help motivate their communities to consider the benefits of organ donation and to then join the Kentucky Organ Donor Registry.
More than 1,000 Kentucky residents are waiting to receive life-saving hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys and other organs. Each year, the UK Transplant Center performs more than 200 transplant procedures, including kidney, lung, liver, heart and pancreas transplants, and kidney and lung transplants for children. As an advanced center, the center also performs combined transplants for double-lung, liver-lung, kidney-pancreas, heart-lung and heart-kidney.
Someone in the United States dies waiting for a live-saving organ every 22 minutes. Every 10 minutes someone is added to the national waiting list.
The best way to honor those who gave the ultimate gift of life and to celebrate the new life of transplant recipients is to register on the Kentucky Organ Donor Registry. The registry is a safe and secure electronic database where a person’s wishes regarding donation will be carried out as requested.
To join the registry, visit www.donatelifeky.org or sign up when you renew your driver’s license. The donor registry enables family members to know that you chose to save and enhance lives through donation. Kentucky’s “First Person Consent” laws mean that the wishes of an individual on the registry will be carried out as requested.
Kentucky’s flag campaign and efforts to promote organ, tissue and eye donation are sponsored by the Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates (KODA).
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.
In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.