Students from Stellenbosch University have initiated a project at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town to assist in making organ donation more effective.

Launching the NGO, Save Seven, what started as a small project has turned into a fully-fledged specialised intensive care unit designed to provide life support to consented organ donors.

Each organ donor has the potential to save seven lives with major organs, such as the kidneys and heart, and assist a further 52 others with tissue donation.

However, during the preparation for organ donation, a bed space is occupied in a ward that could be used for waiting patients.

The Save 7 Life-Pod at Tygerberg Hospital will now allow for families of the organ donor to have a separate space to mourn.

This while transplant experts prepare for the lifesaving operations that could follow.

The students, currently in the 5th year of medical studies, managed to raise R400 000 to establish the facility with highly specialised equipment.

Doctoral student, Jonty Wright is now president of the Save Seven Non-Governmental Oranisation.

“We don’t have ICU space in a traditional ICU in order to handle brain dead donors when they arrive and what this means is that the seven people who would have been saved by one donor have to go and find another organ and they often don’t and that’s why we need rooms like this we need space we need space to give families dignity during this process so that this miracle of transplantation can be unlocked because we have the medical resources we have the surgeons we have the nurses  we just needed the space.”

With assistance from organisations like The Health Foundation, the dedicated space for donor management is finally ready for use.

Health Foundation, CEO, Harry Grainger says, “Because the health foundation is there for partnerships that are currently waiting for funds so we engage with donors to actually come on board and support initiatives that actually serves communities and serves the less vulnerable.”

Senior Sister Shirley Coetzee a registered professional nurse transplant coordinator says if successful, the Life-Pod is hoped to be replicated at other facilities that are in critical need for spaces like this. “We call it donor work up process where we will test every organ so that we can use to transplant to our patients who are many years long on the waiting list for a heart a lung a liver or a kidney so the donor work up will them be much easier done in a comfort care room for our donor and to give family support.”

The official launch of Save7’s Life-Pod is being seen as a groundbreaking innovation projected to save up to 100 lives annually.

Operational Manager for Nursing, Jennifer Juta says, “In the renal unit currently we are almost 150 patients that wait on life saving organ we only do kidney transplants the 150 is waiting on a kidney transplant but the main problem is if we cannot transplant, we cannot accept more patients on the programme.” – Reporting by Mlamli Maneli

Save7 Life-pod launched | Making organ donation more effective