Information About Tissue Donation

Tissue Donation

For every person or family who decides to share life through tissue donation, as many as 100 people can be helped, and eleven lives can be saved. There are less medical restrictions associated with tissue donation. As a result, people who do not qualify as organ donors due to medical conditions can still be tissue donors.

Many donor families say they are comforted by respecting their loved one's wishes to save or improve the quality of the lives of others.

Thousands of Canadians are waiting for tissue transplants: corneas to restore vision, heart valves to replace an infant's defective valves, bone grafts to save a limb that might otherwise be amputated, and skin for severely burned patients are a few examples.

Did You Know?

• Eyes are the most common tissue donated by Manitobans. Of the 93 donors who donated organs &/or tissues in Manitoba in 2005, 77 were eye donors.
  
  
• Bone is the most common tissue transplanted in Manitoba.
  
  2005 statistics
  
  
  • 423 Transplants
  • 296 Bone
  • 68 Corneas/eye tissue
  • 30 Kidney
  • 26 Skin
  • 2 Lung
  • 1 Heart valve