April is National Donate Life Month which was established by Donate Life America and other partnering organizations in 2003. Celebrated in April each year, Donate Life Month 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.

National Donate Life Month 2019: Life is a beautiful ride.

For the 2019 National Donate Life Month theme, Donate Life America was inspired by bicycles and the phrase “Life is a beautiful ride.” Like the donation and transplantation journey, a bicycle serves as a symbol of progress, renewal and moving circle of life.

Bicycles come in all styles, shapes and sizes, but each is made up of the same components, essential to supporting the rider and converting their energy into motion. Similarly, organ, eye and tissue donation offers many ways to give hope, support and strength to patients waiting, recipients and donor families. We each carry the potential to help make life a beautiful ride for ourselves, and then for others, by registering as a donor, considering living donation, being a caregiver and championing the cause.

National Blue & Green Day 2019 is Friday, April 12!

National Blue and Green Day is part of Donate Life America’s Donate Life Month. On Blue and Green Day, we encourage you to wear blue and green to support the effort to promote the success of organ, eye and tissue transplantation and the extreme need for registered donors.

This National Donate Life Month, we ask you to consider your role in this lifesaving and healing journey, and how you can inspire others to provide hope through donor registration and living donation.

The need is great — more than 100,000 men, women and children are waiting for lifesaving organ transplants. Every 10 minutes another person is added to the waiting list. The good news? More than 36,500 organ transplants from 17,500 donors brought new life to patients and their families in 2018.

One donor can save up to eight lives, restore sight to two people and heal the lives of more than 75 people.

Some of the organ donation numbers are staggering:

• More than 84,000 corneal transplants help to restore sight each year.
• More than 1.75 million tissue transplants heal lives each year.
• More than 145.5 million people are registered organ, eye and tissue donors.

What can you do to increase organ, eye and tissue donation?

• Register your decision to be a donor at RegisterMe.org.
• Tell your family and friends about your decision to Donate Life.
• Visit DonateLife.net to discover ways you can be a champion of the cause.
• Ask others to visit DonateLife.net to learn more and register.

How is Vidant Beaufort involved in this life-altering process? Each year, we participate in the Workplace Partnership for Life Campaign which involves educating our staff, our visitors and our community by posting flyers several times a year on hospital bulletin boards, putting organ donation information in the hospital waiting rooms and including organ donation information when we participate in community events, health fairs, etc. We are proud that Vidant Beaufort has achieved the Workplace Partnership for Life Platinum Status for promoting organ donation for the third year in a row, and we’re on our way to achieving that status again in 2019.

We wish you a Happy National Donate Life Month. Thank you for your efforts in promoting donation and the importance of registering your decision to be an organ, eye and tissue donor!

Lynne Fisher RN, MSN, is a quality nurse with Vidant Beaufort Hospital.