THIRTY-TWO per cent of all Thurrock residents are organ donors.
The figures have been released for all areas across the country. Some areas are good and some less so.
The London borough of Barking and Dagenham has the UK’s lowest figure, with only 16.0 per cent registered, closely followed by Harlow with 16.2 per cent.
The county-wide authorities of Wiltshire and Shropshire are in the top ten, with over 60 per cent registered, along with the councils of Hart and Winchester in Hampshire, East Cambridgeshire, and Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.
More affluent London authorities including the City of London – where the registration rate is 54 per cent – and the borough of Richmond-upon-Thames enjoy higher figures.
Some 6,133 people are on the transplant waiting list, including around 280 patients waiting for a new heart, with thousands of operations missed last year because families vetoed the use of their relatives’ organs
Some patients are even waiting for a second heart transplant, but only 27 people have received one over the last decade, figures from NHS Blood and Transplant show, as the NHS begins a week of campaigning to urge patients to make their wishes known to their families.
During Organ Donation Week, NHS Blood and Transplant is encouraging people to talk to their families about their wishes surrounding organ donation.
The UK’s highest organ donor registration rates
1. South Hams, Devon: 71.0%
2. Malvern Hills, Worcestershire: 66.8%
3. Wiltshire: 63.6%
4. City of Edinburgh, Scotland: 62.3%
5. Shropshire: 61.0%
6. Argyll and Bute, Scotland: 61.0%
7. Angus, Scotland: 60.5%
8. Winchester, Hampshire: 60.1%
9. Hart, Hampshire: 59.5%
10. East Cambridgeshire: 59.0%
...and the areas with the lowest organ donor rates
382. Forest Heath, Suffolk: 20.8%
383. Worcester, Worcestershire: 20.6%
384. Sandwell, West Midlands: 20.1%
385. Enfield, London: 20.0%
386. Luton, Bedfordshire: 19.9%
387. Redbridge, London: 19.9%
388. Leicester, Leicestershire: 19.4%
389. Newham, London: 16.3%
390. Harlow, Essex: 16.2%
391. Barking and Dagenham, London: 16.0%
Anthony Clarkson, Interim Director of Organ Donation and Transplantation for NHS Blood and Transplant said: ‘We’d like people to just talk to their families. Words save lives.
‘Please, tell your family you want to save lives through organ donation, because it could be the difference between life and death for someone else.’
Last month it was claimed the new organ donation system in England is ‘unlikely’ to increase the number of donations, researchers have claimed.
The new system for England, which will come into effect in 2020, will mean people, apart from certain groups, will be considered organ donors unless they have explicitly recorded a wish not to be.
