April is National Donate Life Month. Here's how you can help save lives

Raising organ donation awareness

Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, Vice President and Chief of Tampa General Hospital’s Transplant Institute, joined Good Day to discuss National Donate Life Month.

TAMPA, Fla. - April is designated as Donate Life Month, a time to raise awareness about organ donation and encourage people to register to be an organ donor.

It is also a time to honor those who have saved lives through their generous gift of organ donation.

By the numbers:

There are nearly 120,000 adults and children waiting for life-saving organ transplants throughout the country. More than 5,000 of them are here in Florida. Every day, approximately 22 people die while waiting for an organ transplant.

The Tampa General Hospital Transplant Institute is now the number one transplant hospital in the country in terms of the number of transplants.

Courtesy: Tampa General Hospital.

Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy runs the Transplant Institute at TGH. Despite the fact that his hospital is number one in transplants by volume, he says the need for donors is huge.

While most of the donors come from the deceased, donors can also give a kidney. Lately, TGH has been a leader in doing partial liver transplants. Yes, a piece of a liver can be removed from a living donor and transplanted in a patient.

What you can do:

If you would like to become an organ donor, you can register by clicking here.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Russell Rhodes.

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