Medal winner Edward in plea for more organ donors
A quarter of a century of hitting a little white plastic ball back and forth across a tennis table paid off for Derbarl Yerrigan Stolen Generation Officer Edward Brown when he landed a silver medal at the World Transplant Games on the Gold Coast in August.
11 January 2010
Edward qualified for the event because of the kidney transplant operation he underwent in March 2007, which followed an earlier one in 2004 that was not successful.
Edward earned the right to represent his country at the World Games by winning a gold medal in table tennis and a silver medal in darts at the Australian Transplant Games, which was held in Perth in August last year.
Edward, who has been a member of Armadale Table Tennis Club since 1990, plays singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
The games were a great opportunity to meet others who had been through similar experiences to him.
“The event is also about learning skills and maintaining an awareness in the community that we would not be here without people who donate their organs,” Edward said.
Edward had to raise about $3500, including uniform costs, to make it to the games.
Since his operations, Edward keeps a close eye on his health.
“I have to maintain a healthy diet and take my medication on time and visit the doctor regularly,” he said.
Edward feels there is a need for more education around the cultural objections to organ donation which he says would save hundreds of Indigenous lives.
The low pool of Indigenous organ donors was making it difficult for medical authorities to find a match for patients, he said.
Figures from Kidney Health Australia show that at the end of 2007 there were 9642 renal patients in Australia, of whom 1065 or 11 per cent were Indigenous, but the pool of Indigenous donors was very low, compared with donors in the wider population.
Edward was diagnosed with renal failure in 2002, despite the fact that he did not drink and did not have diabetes – the most common triggers for renal failure.
However, work pressure and poor eating habits had probably caused the condition, he said.
Going to the games where he was able to communicate with hundreds of transplant recipients from around the world was the inspiration for him to make a call to the Indigenous community about organ donation.
“There was an eight-year-old non-Aboriginal boy there,” he said. “He had had a lung transplant at the age of three. If he doesn’t receive a donor before the end of this year he may not be alive," Edward said.
“Those were the things that came out at the games. I sat there with 1800 other athletes knowing that every one of us would not have been in that place without a generous person ticking the box and saying I’ll be a donor.”
Perth kidney transplant surgeon Dr Andrew Mitchell said that a larger pool of Indigenous organ donors would make it easier for medical authorities to find a matching organ for patients waiting to have a transplant.
“The quicker you can get a kidney transplant the better your survival long term and also the better your quality of life, so it’s a huge issue,” he said.
“Obviously the answer to that would be more living donors from the Aboriginal population, but it is difficult for them because lots of them live in remote populations and they have to travel to a special clinic and it’s quite a challenge to get all this done for them.”
Dr Mitchell said he was encouraged by Edward’s call for more Indigenous Australians to register as organ donors.
“If there were more deceased Aboriginal donors, then obviously there would be more people the Aboriginal recipients would be able to identify with and therefore it would increase their chances of an early match,” he said.
Edward says there are many cultural issues around organ donation, and it was an issue he struggled with until he was diagnosed with renal failure.
“In the cultural group I grew up in, it’s important to retain your body as best you can,” he said.
“Now we’re in a western world – a world where we need to change our philosophies, and I think that communities need to talk about it.”
The most important form of organ donation is being a living donor, who is usually a family member, he says.
“If people went in from a family and said ‘look, we want to offer a kidney from one of our family’, that would be good,” he said.
“They would be tested and if it was compatible that would give their family member an opportunity to go straight to an operating table and have that transplant.
“It’s important that we as Indigenous people take the lead.”
To become an organ donor you can register at any Medicare office or online at www.donorregister/gov.au.
Story and photograph courtesy of Adrian Kenyon, Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service.
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