Organ donor bill: AG hails ‘watershed moment’

Attorney General Wilfred Abrahams has hailed proposed human tissue transplant legislation as a “watershed moment” for Barbados, saying it will bring long-awaited hope to patients in need of life-saving organ and tissue transplants.

The Human Tissue Transplant Bill, which went before the Senate on Wednesday, will establish a national donor and transplantation registry, create a regulatory council and set out clear legal protocols for consent. 

Abrahams said the legislation had been a long time in coming and paid tribute to renal surgeon Dr Margaret O’Shea, whom he credited with tirelessly campaigning for the bill for decades.

“From what I see here legally in respect of this piece of legislation, I think this is a watershed moment for us. We have never had anything like this. It has been a long time in coming. 

“There are a lot of people in Barbados who have been suffering without an end in sight, and this provides some light at the end of the tunnel.”

Abrahams said he had known Dr O’Shea since he was 11 years old and, despite her fiercely independent nature, “she never asked me for anything… except this”.

He said he first understood the importance of transplant medicine after Dr O’Shea returned from Australia, where she trained as a renal surgeon.

“From then Dr O’Shea was on about the need for tissue transplant legislation in Barbados.”

The attorney general recalled that while he was president of the Barbados Bar Association, Dr O’Shea urged the legal profession to support the organ donor cause. Later, after he was appointed to the Senate, she continued pressing him to champion the legislation.

“When I became a senator, I don’t even think the ink had dried on my appointment before she insisted that I fight this cause.”

After he came into government, Dr O’Shea made a final appeal that he said stayed with him.

“She used a guilt trip. ‘I have never asked you for anything in my life. If you can’t do it for me, do it for all the people who do dialysis,'” Abrahams recalled.

He hailed Dr O’Shea as “the single most dominant voice in this area, the crusader for this cause” for dialysis patients, people living with kidney disease and others awaiting transplants.

The attorney general encouraged Barbadians to think about the legacy they could leave through organ donation.

“Let us think [about] not only while we’re living, but even after that if we can help somebody, when we’ve left this earth.”

(SB)