SVSU’s Peer Health Educators are spending February educating fellow students about the importance of organ donation.
PHE said it hopes to increase the number of donors this month because Feb. 14 is National Donor Day.
Tatum Morrow, a criminal justice junior, said she wants to help people get the organs they need.
“We’re just trying to get people to sign up to be donors who aren’t already,” she said. “There’s so many people on the organ donation list who unfortunately don’t get the organs they need. We’re just trying to get more people on the list so that one day more people can get help.”
Gracie Lefler, an occupational therapy junior, squashed some of the misconceptions regarding organ donation.
“There’s a lot of false myths about organ donations,” Lefler said. “We had somebody walk past [our table] that thought they couldn’t donate. They thought that if there was an accident, a doctor would rather take their organs than try to save them. That’s not true. Doctors don’t know you’re an organ donor until after you’re gone.”
Lefler said she wants her peers to understand that organ donation is not all about giving up your heart and kidneys after you die.
“It’s important because there’s so many people who get sick,” she said. “Even while you’re alive, you can still help them. [Some of] your organs regrow. Some of them you can live without parts of, and those parts can actually save people.”
Lefler said the human body can be very important, even after death.
“Organ transplants aren’t just the typical kidneys and heart transplants that you think of when you hear about organ donation,” she said. “It’s tissue, it’s cartilage, it’s the eye cornea and skin grafts. It’s so much more than you realize.”
Marrow said being a donor is incredibly important to her.
“It just means that if something were to happen to me, like if I were in an accident, just knowing that other people are getting the most out of my body, just knowing that I’m giving the most out of my body, is nice,” she said. “I’m not going to use my organs after I’m gone. It’s about doing a good thing.”
PHE will be doing table sits all throughout the month of February. Students interested in signing up to be a donor should bring a valid state-issued I.D. to Doan 105 to join the registry.
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