Sussex crash victims organ donation saved lives during pandemic

Claudia-Rose Moor, from St Leonards-on-Sea, was critically injured in a car accident on the A21 in Robertsbridge in April last year.

Doctors at the Royal Sussex County Hospital battled for four days to save the 23-year-old’s life but were unable to save her.

• READ MORE: Couple raise awareness of rare eye disorder that left baby blind

After her family were told she would not survive, Claudia-Rose’s mother Nichola remembered a conversation the family had a year earlier, in which her daughter insisted she wanted to be an organ donor.

“I just knew I had to make it happen,” Nichola said.

Due to the pandemic, Nichola was unsure whether they’d be able to fulfil her daughter’s dream.

But in the end, three of Claudia-Rose’s organs were donated - her heart, liver and a kidney – all of which went to different people.

Nichola said she and her family are “incredibly proud” of Claudia-Rose’s decision to help others in need.

“She would do anything for anyone,” she said. “She treated strangers as friends and that’s what’s so poignant about her being a donor.

“She would give anyone anything, she was so generous, and we are so proud that her lasting legacy is giving life to three other people.”

Claudia-Rose Moor died after a car accident on the A21 in Robertsbridge in April last year

Transplants become riskier to perform during the pandemic due to safety concerns and lack of available resources, which resulted in the number of operations being performed falling significantly.

As a result, 487 people died waiting for a transplant last year, compared with 372 the year before – a 22% rise.

Despite this, efforts were made to keep up procedures for the most critically ill and a report by NHS Blood and Transplant published on Thursday found that, despite extreme pressures on the health service, doctors still managed to carry out 80% of normal transplant activity.

Transplant centres now have the challenge of dealing with the backlog of new referrals and with the patients who were temporarily removed from the list at the pandemic’s peak.

It is estimated that the number of people waiting for a transplant in the UK is now around 7,000 - the highest figure since 2012/2013.

Living donor transplants, which fell by 58% during the pandemic, have also resumed.

The number of families consenting to organ donation has risen again for the sixth consecutive year, to 69%.

Organ donation law has changed in England and Scotland, meaning it will be assumed people want to be a donor after death unless they register otherwise.

NHS Blood and Transplant medical director John Forsythe said: “The fact that we managed to maintain three-quarters of our normal donation and transplantation activity is absolutely phenomenal.

“There’s no escaping the fact that organ donation and transplantation will take some time to recover completely, as will the rest of the NHS.”