National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week is an annual campaign that takes place across the country on the last week of April. This special week is dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of organ and tissue donation, and encouraging Canadians to register as organ donors. Each year, this initiative saves countless lives and helps to improve the health and wellbeing of countless individuals.

• Organ transplants have been chronicled in many early civilizations, like ancient Greece and China

• In 1960, British immunologist Peter Medawar received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of acquired immune tolerance. This led to the creation of anti-rejection drugs enabled patients to receive organs from non-identical donors!  

• You can donate not only organs, but corneas, heart valves, blood vessels, skin and bone! 

• In 1954 the surgeons transplanted a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick into his twin brother Richard; since donor and recipient were genetically identical, the procedure succeeded. 

• One organ donor can save up to 8 lives  

• Tissue and  eye donors have the potential to improve up to 75 more.

• There are more than 2,200 transplants each year 

• Organ donation is becoming increasingly more common worldwide; Southeast Asia leads the world in living donors, with almost 95% of their organ donations coming from this category! 

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