A leading surgeon has praised Max and Keira’s Law for transforming organ donation and taking pressure off grieving families.
Colin Wilson is a consultant transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle where Mirror campaigner Max Johnson got his new heart in 2017.
The schoolboy led our five-year Change the Law for Life crusade for people in England to be presumed to be donors when they die unless they opt out.
When the law was introduced in 2020 it was named after Max, now 14, from Winsford, Cheshire, and his donor Keira Ball, who died aged nine in a car accident near her home in Barnstaple, Devon.
Colin, 47, said: “Max and Keira’s Law is a great thing. It takes pressure off the donor family at a time when they do not want to be thinking of these kinds of issues.
“They want to be thinking about their loved one; the law we had before made everything very traumatic. Now they can say, ‘This is what we have agreed in advance’. It will become part of the process of life and death.
“We know from surveys 90% of people think organ donation is a good thing. But it can be hard to make that decision when they feel such pain and loss. The new law was the right thing to do.”
Colin appears in the new series of Channel 4 ’s Geordie Hospital as it focuses on the Freeman over the next six weeks.
The dad-of-two from Druridge Bay, Northumberland, said promotion of organ donation is key.
Colin, who has carried out up to 300 liver, kidney and pancreas transplants, said keyhole surgery has made live kidney donation easier.
He added: “Transplant surgery was painful before. It could stop donors going to work and they could develop hernias. Now with keyhole surgery they go home the next day, even the same day.
“It’s an important message: we’re born with two kidneys but you only need one.”
Geordie Hospital, Monday, 8pm, C4.
