For the fourth year in a row, the North Bay Regional Health Centre is the recipient of a provincial organ donor program.
The hospital has been given the Provincial Conversion Rate Award by the Trillium Gift of Life Network.
Ronnie Gavsie, the network’s President and CEO, says North Bay was one of 24 hospitals across Ontario to receive the award.
In order to be recognized, hospitals had to hit an organ conversion rate of at least 58 percent where a recipient receives a life-saving organ from a donor.
Gavsie says in North Bay there are three people waiting for organ transplants.
They make up 1,500 people across Ontario who are on the organ donor waiting list.
Gavsie says not everyone gets an organ in time and on average three people on the list die each day.
Gavsie says the Gift of Life Network is a finely tuned agency that can get an organ from one part of the province to one of eight transplant centres in Ontario in a very short period of time.
Many steps are involved and Gavsie says it’s very easy for something to go wrong when trying to move an organ to a recipient.
One of those factors is the weather which can delay a departure from one site or arriving to another location.
The process to get an organ to another person is also detailed.
Gavsie says first the family of the deceased has to be asked about any organs and the family has to agree to have them removed.
The network then has to ensure the recipient is a suitable candidate for organs and then it has to make sure the organ is going to be a match for someone on the waiting list.
It’s at this point that the recovery team goes to where the donor lived, puts the organ in a red organ cooler and gets it to a transplant centre where the recipient will be waiting in an operating room.
Gavsie says all these steps happen in just a matter of a few hours.
Gavsie says staff are embedded at the hospitals so they can spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“It’s a fine-tuned process,” she said.
“The players around the province work in high synchronicity to make this happen. And Ontario is the lead in this orchestration.”