Centre flooded with calls after organ donation story

Star: KUALA LUMPUR: The National Transplant Resource Centre was inundated with calls yesterday after The Star front-paged the story of a 19-year-old who died of brain tumour and had his wish of donating his organs and tissues fulfilled.
Dr Lela Yasmin Mansor, chief of the centre, thanked the media for highlighting such stories.
“The impact and response is really great,” she said yesterday.
Dr Lela hoped this would encourage other young people to come forward and pledge to donate their organs.
Yesterday, The Star reported that Teoh Chit Hwa died of brain tumour on May 11, but his act of donating his tissues and organs would give 35 people a new lease of life.
The centre received more than 50 calls yesterday asking about organ donation and about five people walked in to ask for forms, said senior assistant transplant coordinator Jamaliah Kario.
“The telephones just rang non-stop,” she said.
On a normal day, Jamaliah said, she would get one or two calls only, and “very seldom” would she get a walk-in visitor.
At the National Heart Institute, heart transplant co-ordinator sister S. Ramayee received 10 e-mail, all requesting for pledge forms in bulk.
“I don’t normally get so many e-mail in a day,” she said, adding that whenever newspapers ran a story on organ donation, it would spark off interest to pledge.
Dr Lela recalled that when The Star ran the story of an 82-year-old woman donating her corneas after she passed away in July 2002, the centre received calls from senior citizens asking for forms.