Search Results for 'Organ donation'

RONAN FAGAN

County Galway resident, Mary Verbruggan, is in a unique position to help launch Organ Donor Awareness Week.

Galway will be among a number of cities participating today (Nov 30) in an Irish-led global commemorative event taking place at which organ donors and their families will be remembered, and their generosity acknowledged. This global event involves an inter-city gifting of stone sculpted candles, symbolising the light of humanity shone through donation, and will also include the reading of an open letter expressing the deep sense of appreciation and gratitude felt by society to organ donors and their families.

Three months after setting off from the ‘Circle of Life’ memorial garden in Salthill on an incredible 2500km walk around the Irish coast raising funds and awareness for the Irish Heart and Lung Transplant Association (IHLTA), this weekend foster carer and heart transplant recipient Ron Cummins successfully made it back to the special spot where his walk started.

A Mayo mum has said her family is “truly indebted” to the staff at Temple Street Children’s Hospital after her four-year-old daugther received a life changing kidney transplant there last year.

An impressive group of teens from Barnacarroll have won national recognition for their campaign to encourage their friends and classmates to carry organ donor cards in the hopes they would then be more likely to sign-up as donors in adulthood.

More than 2,000 people are expected to attend the Irish Kidney Association’s 29th annual service of remembrance and thanksgiving which will be held at Galway Cathedral on Saturday at 12.30pm.

Uachtaráin na hÉireann Michael D Higgins will be returning to Galway on Saturday September 27 to visit the Circle of Life garden in Salthill.

Fine Gael TD for Mayo, John O’Mahony, has welcomed the measures announced in the HSE Service Plan which will see €3 million per year provided for organ donations. This follows on from, and will make practicable, the legislation proposed by Minister for Health James Reilly which aims to ensure that people have to opt out of donating their organs upon their death, rather than opt in. Deputy O’Mahony has lobbied intensively for the legislation to be introduced and for the funding to back it up. This was alluded to by former Gaelic footballer, Joe Brolly, and his friend Shane Finnegan in their statement welcoming the development which said: