Wick father’s desperate appeal for organ donors

Simon Avery, of Sandfield Avenue, has suffered from a degenerative kidney condition, since he was nine years old.

Simon, now 36, said he has had to undertake five hours-worth of dialysis treatment, three times a week at Worthing Hospital, for the past three years to combat his nephritis – a condition which causes the kidneys to become inflamed and slowly fail.

In May, this year, he had an operation to replace one of his failing kidneys. However, within days, his body rejected the donor organ and he was forced to have it removed.

He is now calling on people from the Littlehampton area to register as organ donors, as part of National Transplant Week, which began on Monday (July 9) and is due to finish on Sunday (July 15).

“Becoming a donor really can change lives. When normal people think about going on holiday, for instance, they don’t have to think which hospitals they will have to visit, while there.

“It’s something so small, that can make an absolute world of difference to people like me and my family,” he said.

Simon and his family now face an anxious wait to see if an organ donor is discovered.

Around 35 per cent of people living in the south of England are registered donors but this is nowhere near enough to meet the need for the vital transplants, with more than 1,400 people across the region currently on waiting lists for hearts, lungs, livers, pancreas or corneas.

Last year alone, 23 people from the region died, while waiting for their life-saving operations, with a total of 102 losing their lives across the entire south of England.

To add your name to the NHS Organ Donor Register, call 0300 123 2323, text JOIN to 84880 or visit here.