The Saskatchewan government announced earlier this month they've launched an online organ and tissue donor registry and one local resident is pleased with the action.

Swift Current's Sammy Khalife was part of a group that approached the provincial government regarding the idea about three years and he's thrilled the province was able to implement it. He didn't believe their suggestion would see the light of day in his lifetime.

 

 

"To see the website live, at first I bust out crying," he said Thursday morning. "It's a great feeling, and to be part of it is even greater. I feel like now I can leave and I put my mark in the community."

Khalife is one of many across the province in current need of an organ or tissue donor to help extend their lives. He personally is waiting for a heart transplant because he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (his heart is growing too big).

"It's not something I have done, it's genetic, I was born with it," he said. "All of a sudden I was getting heart failure after heart failure and through the process they told me I needed to be on the organ and tissue transplant list."

Recently Khalife was struggling health-wise and while in an Edmonton hospital was told they needed to equip him with a ventricular assist device.

"It's a pump that replaces part of your heart," he said. "The only part of your heart left is your valves. So they attach the values. I run off lithium batteries."

Khalife mentioned he is high on the list to receive a transplant but health professionals want to have the perfect match and due to the low number of people donating, that becomes one of the next issues he'd like to see tackled.

"Every organ donation can save up to eight lives and every tissue donation can save up to 75," he said. "We're looking at those numbers and a lot of people are dying but not a lot of people are donating, and that's a problem."

Fourth-thousand two-hundred and eleven people registered for the donor service on September 3 the day the website went live.

Another issue in the donor process is the next-of-kin can change the deceased person's wish.

"We still need to talk to our family," he said. "We run into situations when a lot of younger people die and their family are just emotional, they can't let go of any part of the body and they override their wish and their desire to be an organ donor. On the other side, we've seen people with the same situation but they've wanted to give life to someone."

According to Khalife, the province's health minister is looking into the presumed consent and even speaking with the Nova Scotia about the process.

"We have a lot of legalities to go through it," he said.

One more obstacle he noted for the province specifically would be for a wide array of transplants to be possible within Saskatchewan.

"I know there is in Regina and Saskatoon some transplant centres for kidneys and simple things," he acknowledged. "But now all of it is done in Edmonton. We appreciate the contact that the government has with Edmonton but that leaves us with a high cost of travelling and living there for months."

The Saskatchewan Health Authority noted in an email yesterday the registry cost about $150,000 to build and implement.

View the full interview with Sammy Khalife below.