THUMBS UP: DonateLife Week is being supported by the Western Bulldogs AFL club and the Melbourne Storm NRL team. Pictured at the DonateLife launch were: Marcus Bontempelli (Western Bulldogs), Jarome Hughes (Storm), Cooper Johns (Storm) and Caleb Daniel (Western Bulldogs).
THE Australian Government has kicked off its Great Registration Race for its DonateLife Week campaign urging Ipswich resident to join fellow Aussies to sign up as organ and tissue donors.
The campaign will run throughout the next two months and in last week of July will be named DonateLife Week.
With around 1,750 people on the organ transplant waitlist, more can be done to encourage our friends, family, and colleagues to register as donors.
There are also a further 13,000 Aussies on dialysis, many who may benefit from a kidney transplant. Just one organ donor can save up to 7 lives.
And while four in five Australians say they support organ donation, only one in three people are registered organ and tissue donors.
This leaves 13 million Australians aged 16 and over who are eligible to register, but haven’t.
Launching the Great Registration Race for DonateLife Week campaign, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, Ged Kearney, said sport was a clear way to connect with Australians who may not
otherwise know to register as organ and tissue donors.
Official DonateLife partners, AFL club Western Bulldogs and NRL team Melbourne Storm, helped kick off the campaign by meeting little Chloe Loo-Tandiyono, 5, who had a liver transplant in Melbourne as a baby.
This month, players from both teams will feature in new digital ads and appear throughout the campaign in a show of support for the thousands of Australians whose lives depend on receiving an organ donation, and the many more whose lives would be transformed through tissue donation.
Former Brisbane Broncos and Wallabies star Sam Thaiday is also using his sporting profile to help raise awareness.
As part of the campaign launch this week, he’s releasing a new six-part podcast series ‘A gift worth giving’, supported by a DonateLife Community Awareness Grant.
It only takes one minute to sign up at donatelife.gov.au or just three taps on your Express Plus Medicare app.
“We are a proud sports-loving nation, and it’s great to see our professional players and teams getting behind DonateLife.”
