Poplar Bluff Mayor Steve Davis on Friday proclaimed the month of April to be National Donate Life Month.
Davis presented Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center CEO Rick Naegler with a proclamation in recognition of PBRMC’s efforts and advancements in their mission to save lives through organ transplants.
Davis explained more than 100,000 Americans and nearly 1,900 in Missouri are currently on the national transplant waiting list. Another person is added to that list every nine minutes and on average 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.
The most effective way to address the health crisis, according to Davis, is to educate and encourage citizens to commit to becoming organ and tissue donors.
PBRMC is a partner with Mid-America Transplant. According to Naegler, they have seen 90 patients give the gift of life as eye, tissue or organ donors in the past three years.
Naegler had a personal take on the issue of organ donation.
“My son actually had a kidney transplant. It’s completely overwhelming, one of the scariest times I have had in my life, but he’s healthy, he’s doing great,” said Naegler.
He went on to say, “I want to honor all the staff that takes care of this and promotes this great thing on a day-to-day basis. But I also want to continue the education (about) the importance of that (donation). I know it’s scary, but there’s a whole team of people in our community that can help with those decisions and make it the best possible solution for everybody.”
Kevin Lee, CEO of Mid America Transplant, also took the opportunity to address the crowd of doctors, nurses and community members in attendance.
“When that decision needs to be made to be an organ, tissue or eye donor, you are impacting lives across our community and our region. And to think that the mayor shared that over 2,000 tissue grafts were made available by donor heroes and Poplar Bluff and by the medical team here. The ripple effect of that donation will be felt for decades,” said Lee.
He went on to explain, last year, across the state of Missouri, Mid America Transplant worked with 279 organ donors and 2,200 tissue donors.
“Those organ donor heroes went on to save 772 lives and those tissue donors have made 165,000 grafts possible. People in the great state of Missouri, people here in the Poplar Bluff region are incredibly generous,” said Lee.
Anyone interested in becoming an organ or tissue donor can find information or sign up at the following sites, www.donatelifemissouri.org/register/ or