National Donate Life Month
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
National Donate Life Month (NDLM) was instituted by Donate Life America and its partnering organizations in 2003 with the support of the Secretary of HHS, Tommy Thompson. Celebrated in April each year, NDLM features an entire month of local, regional, and national activities to help encourage Americans to register as organ, eye, and tissue donors and to celebrate those that have saved lives through the gift of donation.
NDLM United States Proclamation
More than 55 years after the first successful organ transplant in December of 1954, thousands of individuals have recognized the importance of giving the gift of life to others. In 2010, over 14,500 people were organ donors. Thanks to them and thousands of others before them, more than half a million people in the United States received transplants.
Despite the compassion of so many, National Donate Life Month is a time when we also must raise public awareness that there continues to be a critical need for more donors and an increasing gap between the number of people whose lives depend upon receiving an organ transplant and the number of available organs. More than 110,740 people are on the waiting list for an organ transplant. Thousands more need tissue and corneal transplants each year, and about 30,000 people a year are diagnosed with blood diseases that may be cured by a marrow/blood stem cell transplant.
Every day in April, people across the U.S. make a special effort to celebrate the tremendous generosity of those who have saved lives by becoming organ, eye, tissue, marrow, and blood donors and to encourage more Americans to follow their fine example. Several activities are organized during this month to call attention to the need for organ and tissue donation, the impact donation has in saving the lives of other individuals, and the importance of people making their wishes known to their families in the event of an untimely death.
In celebration of NDLM, Donate Life Connecticut joins together with State Legislators, Mayors and First Selectman, the Department of Motor Vehicles, organ and tissue donor families, transplant recipients and health professionals who advocate organ donation to bring public awareness and education to the residents of Connecticut. This media event at the State Capitol is a wonderful public opportunity to rally in support of the growing Connecticut Donor Registry. For more information, contact us at 203-387-1549.
Leave a Legacy
During National Donate Life Month in April, we honor the people who have given the gift of life through organ, eye, and tissue donation. We also celebrate the lives that have been saved and healed because of a donor’s generosity.
This year’s theme uses trees as a symbol of life and connection. Just like trees grow and support each other in a forest, donation connects people—donors, recipients, and their families. Like a tree that grows and stands for generations, a donor’s gift leaves a lasting legacy of hope and life.
Your decision to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor gives hope to the 100,000 people on the national organ transplant waiting list who are waiting for a second chance at life.
During National Donate Life Month (NDLM) and throughout the year, join us in helping save and heal lives by registering your decision to be an organ, eye, and tissue donor, learn more about living donation, and championing the Donate Life cause.