ORGAN DONATION

The Hon. L. STEVENS (Little Para) (15:45): After the tragic death of a driver at last weekend's Clipsal event, I note that this morning's Advertiser reported that the organs of the deceased driver had been able to benefit seven different people. This series of events follows on from Organ Donation Awareness Week, which was last week. I want to spend a few minutes talking about this. I was delighted to receive an invitation to attend the launch at Lyell McEwin Health Service of its participation and ongoing participation in the National Organ Donor Collaborative in which the Lyell McEwin and a number of other hospitals in South Australia participate.

It is worth mentioning some of the issues in relation to organ donation in our country and the need for us to improve the rate of organ donation. Also last week, the parliamentary secretary to the federal Minister for Health and Ageing (Senator Jan McLucas) released a national clinical task force final report on organ and tissue donation. That report contains 51 recommendations to improve the donation and transplantation system in Australia. The parliamentary secretary made some very pertinent points about organ donation in Australia. Firstly, at any one time in Australia over 1,800 Australians are waiting for an organ transplant. Secondly, more than 90 per cent of Australians are reported to support the idea of organ and tissue donation, but even though that is the case, we have one of the lowest donation rates in the Western world.

At the Lyell McEwin Health Service launch, national donor statistics from 2005 from the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation were put in front of us. The statistics were in terms of donors per million of population. The country with the highest donation rate is Spain with 35.1, and Australia is 15^th after France, the US, Italy, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Norway and others, including the UK. We are 15^th, with 10 donors per million of population.

There certainly is a real gap for us to try to correct. We need to do two things. Firstly, we need to ensure that as many people as possible register their consent on the Australian Organ Donation Register, which is administered by Medicare and which is available everywhere, including on the internet and, importantly, ensure that people discuss their choice and their decision with their families. Secondly—and this is sometimes left out of these discussions—we have to ensure that procedures are in our hospitals to maximise the potential for donation to occur.

That is what the collaborative is about. It is about the hospitals involved, and there are over 20 hospitals in Australia participating in this collaborative. As I said, the Lyell McEwin is one of them, and they will be working—and the funding goes until June 2009—to improve procedures so that we can get the best possible results in very difficult circumstances and try to improve that massive gap between those wanting organs and the actual numbers that are donated.