Politics
A Milestone for Organ Donations
More than half of eligible New York State residents have signed up to be organ donors, though the state’s health commissioner said that is still not enough.
Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out about new data on organ donations in New York State. We’ll also get details on charges against an official of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in connection with a failed assassination plot in Brooklyn.
A liver transplant operation in Manhattan, which stands out among New York City’s five boroughs in organ donor registrations.Credit…Alex di Suvero for The New York Times
For the first time, the share of eligible New Yorkers who have signed up to be organ donors has passed 50 percent.
New figures being released today show that 7.9 million people in New York State have given permission for their organs to be used for transplants or research. That works out to 50.3 percent of those eligible, up from 48 percent at the end of last year.
Aisha Tator, the executive director of Donate Life New York State, a nonprofit that works to increase organ, eye and tissue donation, said the figure was a significant milestone, even if it was well below the national average of 64 percent. New York has long trailed other states in sign-ups, and Dr. James McDonald, the state health commissioner, said that New York was “still not anywhere close to leading the nation on this.”
Tator said that the number of people registered as donors had doubled in the last 10 years, as her group worked with state agencies to put sign-up messages in more places than on the forms drivers see when they renew their licenses.
