The World’s Most Important Search Engine!
Based in Canton, Massachusetts., MatchingDonors.com is a company with technical, matching facilitators, editorial and administrative people based throughout the United States. MatchingDonors is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
Their Mission Statement: MatchingDonors.com is a web site created to give people in need of transplant surgery an active way to search for a live organ donor. Our goal is to increase the number of transplant surgeries and improve awareness of live organ donation. The most common organs transplanted from a live donor are single kidney and liver lobes.
The problem, as they see it, is that in 1993 there were 31,000 people on the national organ transplant waiting list. In 2005 there were 90,000 people. There are approximately 17 people a day dying while waiting on the list. Although live organ donation has been performed successfully since 1954 there are only six to seven thousand live organ donations per year.
Most of the transplanted organs at this time are from cadavers, which become available at a minutes notice to the potential recipient. The organ is distributed through United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) who maintains the national waiting list under contract from the federal government. UNOS also attempts to increase organ donation awareness. Unfortunately, organ donation has been stagnant over the years and there is a severe shortage of available cadaver organs.
One answer: With their growing list of potential live organ donors signing on to MatchingDonors.com it is becoming increasingly clear that there are thousands of altruistic and compassionate people willing to help a fellow human being. It is their belief that many of the potential donors would have never considered live organ donation if it wasn’t for the increased awareness due to their site. MatchingDonors.com augments the current system by allowing people in need of organ transplantation the ability to search for potential live organ donors over the World Wide Web.
A potential recipient places his or her profile on the web site and can then review the emails of potential donors interested in helping. I just checked my Driver’s License, and I’m marked as an organ donor -if I die. But would I donate part of a kidney or my liver right now? That’s as maybe.
But for anyone on the waiting list, this may be the World’s Most Important Search Engine!
