National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week–Talk to Your Loved Ones!

Montréal, April 19, 2021–National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week is April 18 to 25, and Héma-Québec is taking the opportunity to remind everyone of the importance of indicating your consent to be a donor by signing your health insurance card or joining one of the official registries and, especially, letting your loved ones know your wishes.

Without the generosity of those who accept to make such a donation after death, and the agreement of their loved ones to honour that choice, it would be impossible to meet the needs of sick patients or those injured in an accident who require a graft. The death of a loved one is always a difficult time. Knowing the person’s wishes makes it easier to speak with the medical team and with Héma-Québec, which is responsible for retrieving, preparing and distributing human tissues.

Human tissue donation: a legacy of life

Those close to a human tissue donor often state that this donation helps them make sense of the death of their loved one. For the mother of 17-year-old Catherine Poulin, who died in an accident with her boyfriend Jérémy Routhier, also 17 years old, the decision was an easy one to make. “Despite her young age, my daughter had made her wishes clear to us where something to happen to her. Jérémy had done the same with his family. So, we didn’t hesitate when the medical team approached us: the decision was obvious. Although we were feeling the pain of losing our children, we were comforted in knowing that their donation would help restore health to several patients in need”, says Sophie Thivierge.

To learn more about donating human tissues, visit the Héma-Québec website at www.hema-quebec.qc.ca, Human Tissues section.

About Héma-Québec

Héma-Québec acts as a supplier of human tissues intended for transplants (including cutaneous tissues, heart valves, and musculoskeletal tissues, such as tendons and bones), and makes them available to Québec hospitals. Héma-Québec retrieves and prepares eye tissues for use in cornea transplants.

Héma-Québec’s mission is to efficiently meet the needs of the Québec population for quality blood and other biological products of human origin. Héma-Québec encompasses 1,500 employees and nearly 255,000 blood, stem cell, mother’s milk and human tissue donors, in addition to thousands of blood drive volunteers. Each year, Héma-Québec delivers some 820,000 human biological products to Québec hospitals to meet the needs of patients.

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Information:

Héma-Québec
Media line | 514-832-0871
www.hema-quebec.qc.ca