Students Learn About Organ Donations in Health

On Wednesday, December 12th, Sue Jones, from Intermountain Donor Services, came to Springville Junior High.  She taught the students in Mr. Chambers’s health classes all about the importance of organ donations.

An organ donor is a person who is willing to donate their organs to people who need them to live.  Did you know that you can donate several organs?  Some of the organs you can donate include: your heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver.  If fact, just one donor can save at least nine lives!

It is very important to learn about organ donations at this age, because when students receive their driver’s license, they must make a decision about whether or not they want to be an organ donor.  Mr. Chambers, teacher at SJHS, said, “It is important to be educated about something before we make choices.”  Anybody can be an organ donor, but they must be at least eighteen years old to donate.

Students thought learning about organ donations was interesting.  Taylor Whitney, and eighth grader at SJHS, is amazed by how liver transplants are done.  Part of your liver is taken off and given to another person.  The part of your liver that was removed then grows back.  The craziest part is that the donated part of your liver grows into a full liver inside the other person!  Taylor said, “It surprises me how many people are on the list waiting for an organ donation, and how few donors there are.”

Sue Jones also taught the students why there are a lot of organ donors in the US, but we still have so few organs to donate.  The reason behind this is that in order for someone to donate their organs, they must die under certain conditions.  They must die in a hospital from head trauma, hooked up to a ventilator.  Only the people who die in these circumstances can have their organs donated.

Mr. Chambers knows someone who has had to have a transplant.  His sister-in-law had a cornea transplant.  According to Taylor, one of her cousins would have had to have a liver transplant, but fortunately, doctors were able to help her.

Today’s technology is very advanced.  It allows us to take one of our organs and place it into another person’s body.  It’s pretty amazing.