Family’s comfort as Donna’s death saves four others

Thomas Baillie, 54, revealed that the death of his daughter Donna Karami had given hope to a string of needy patients after her liver, pancreas and kidneys were donated for transplant.

Paramedics battled to save the 30-year-old after a neighbour found her collapsed outside her Edinburgh home on July 25 but she died en route to hospital.

All the recipients of her organs are said to be progressing well after surgery.

One kidney was donated to a male teenager while the other went to a middle-aged man, who also required her pancreas. Surgeons divided her liver in two, with the smaller lobe transplanted into a desperately ill baby and the larger lobe donated to a man in his 50s.

Mr Baillie told of the tragic day his daughter had died.

“A neighbour found her and the paramedics were there within five minutes but could not resuscitate her,” he said.

“She was dead in the ambulance but they resuscitated her heart in hospital but she was brain stem dead.”

When the family was asked to consider organ donation, they agreed without hesitation.

“I just wish there were more donors out there,” he said.

Ms Karami, who has an eight-year-old daughter, would have celebrated her 31st birthday this week.

In an online tribute to their daughter, parents Thomas and Audrey wrote: “Goodbye my beautiful daughter.

“Will always miss you day by day. Not a day will go past that I don’t think of you. You will always be in my heart.”

Consent rates for organ donation following brain death continued to rise last year, from 61 per cent of families approached to 65 per cent.

Sally Johnson, director of Organ Donation and Transplantation at NHSBT, said: “I am delighted that we have been able to continue to build on previous years’ work and more transplants than ever are taking place. But there is more we must do.”

To register go to www. organdonation.nhs.uk or call 0300 123 23 23.

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