Green Shirt Day starts tomorrow (April 7th), which is an awareness campaign to encourage people to sign up to be organ donors.
BC Transplant broke down some of the stats from last year, and Northern Health had 39 people receive organ transplants, with 529 provincewide.
The north saw six deceased donors out of a total of 150 in BC.
585 people across the province were on the transplant waitlist in 2021.
From 2014 to 2019, the province saw strong growth in new registrations for organ donation, peaking in 2019 at 160,627.
2020 saw new registrations drop to 44,528, and that dropped even lower last year to 10,790.
Anyone interested in registering to be a donor can do so here.
Provincial Operations Director for BC Transplant, Edward Ferre, said the pandemic resulted in no in person events this year, but they’re still trying to get the word out.
“Unfortunately we don’t have any in person activities, so we’re focused really on raising awareness online through social media, encouraging people to take two minutes and register as organ donors, and certainly have conversations with their families about their decision.”
Green Shirt Day is in honour of the Logan Boulet Effect.
“It’s a result of what’s really known as the Logan Boulet Effect, and that’s really when tens of thousands of Canadians registered to be donors, and they were inspired by Logan, who was one of the Humboldt Broncos who died in the tragic bus accident in 2018, and went on to donate his organs,” added Ferre.
Boulet’s donation saved six lives.
Today (Wednesday) marks the fourth anniversary of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash.
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