A CT Navy veteran wants you to know organ donation is a ‘beautiful thing’. 1,000+ people are waiting

Hartford Courant – Monday, November 11, 2024
By Stephen Underwood

A Connecticut Navy veteran is spreading the word about the lifesaving work organ and tissue transplantation has on thousands of military members across the country.

Chas MacKenzie, who joined the U.S. Navy in 1984 and became a hospital corpsman at Naval Hospital San Diego, is now working for New England Donor Services as their director of donation development. In this role, MacKenzie serves as a leader on the tissue donation services team, where he works to maximize organ donation and bring attention to its importance.

“The Navy was one of my first introductions to knowing there was even such a thing as transplantation in medicine,” MacKenzie said. “At the end of corps school, we were told that there was additional schooling to become a transplant technician. I didn’t take the Navy up on that, but I always looked back on that as sort of planting the seed in my mind for what an interesting field of medicine transplantation is.”

The US Navy Tissue Bank was established in 1949 by Dr. George Hyatt, an orthopedic surgeon at the Naval Medical Center in Maryland, according to the Navy. The Navy program was the first of its kind in the world and established many of the standards that are followed today, according to MacKenzie. Since then, transplantation technology has improved greatly with improved patient recovery and outcomes, he said.

“The technology has really improved leaps and bounds over the last few decades,” MacKenzie said. “Transplantation patients often go on to live healthy and productive lives. It’s an incredible aspect of health care.”

MacKenzie would go on to serve 250 sailors as one of four hospital corpsman on a small ship stationed in Little Creek, Virginia until being honorably discharged in 1988. He said some veterans ending up needing lifesaving transplantation for injuries sustained in and out of duty. NEDS, one of the nation’s largest organ procurement organizations, has been recovering a new form of nerve tissue to help veterans with traumatic injuries, he said.

“A lot of recipients of nerve grafts are service members who are having their arms and legs be usable again because of these donated nerve tissues,” MacKenzie said. “A huge, huge number of our recipients are in the armed forces needing skin for burns and bones for reconstructive injuries. It’s fair to say our armed service members are in high need of these precious gifts of tissues.”

New England Donor Services works by coordinating organ and tissue donation in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont’s eastern counties. Through being a federally designated organ procurement organization, the New England Organ Bank, and its centralized tissue donation services operation, NEDS serves thousands of donor families each year, according to its website. NEDS works with nearly 200 hospitals and serves 14 million people in New England, screening nearly 50,000 potential donor referrals annually, matching them with patients who need transplantation.

“NEDS is on pace this year to have 675 organ donors and around 1,800 tissue donors,” MacKenzie said. “Each one of those tissue donors can have as many as 75 recipients and each one of those organ donors could have as many as six or seven recipients. Tremendous numbers for how many people can be impacted. Many of those on the list will be veterans.”

MacKenzie said that the national transplantation waiting list has around 115,000 people needing organ or tissue transplantation. Among those on the waiting list, the majority are waiting for a kidney transplant. Beyond that, liver, heart and lung transplant patients make up the bulk of the waiting list, MacKenzie said. In total, nearly 6,000 people in New England are waiting for an organ, according to NEDS.

In 2023, 130 people in Connecticut who died donated organs, eyes or tissue, which was a record high for the state, according to data from the Donate Life organization. Despite this, over 1,000 people remain on the donor waiting list waiting for a transplant at the state’s two transplant centers — Yale New Haven Hospital and Hartford Hospital — according to NEDS. MacKenzie said many of those on the list are veterans.

“It’s a fascinating phenomenon to see the gratitude of all of our recipients that are given life-saving transplantation,” MacKenzie said. “I often interact with numerous veterans who receive transplantation. Many of them take that opportunity of renewed health to give back. They donate time to volunteer with their donation organization and try to encourage people to register as organ donors. A lot of people are unaware that people are having their lives saved and restored by organ and tissue donation.”

MacKenzie said he encourages everyone to give life and become a registered organ donor. Once an individual becomes an organ donor, they are agreeing to be placed on a donation registry and that, upon dying, their organs and tissues will be harvested to help those in need.

“In the 32 years that I have been involved in this, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t reflect on the fact that this is work that only happens because of the good, altruistic nature of human beings,” MacKenzie said. “This is somebody saying ‘yes, I want to help somebody else out’ having no idea who that recipient is. They’re not saying I’m only giving my organs to a female, male, Democrat, Republican, Jew, Catholic or non-religious person. None of that. They are making the choice to donate with no idea who the recipient is going to be. They just know that another human being will benefit from this gift. It’s pure altruism and that’s a beautiful thing.”

For those who would like to become a registered organ and tissue donor in Connecticut, the Department of Motor Vehicles allows individuals to register as organ donors online, by mail or in person. Anyone holding a Connecticut driver’s license, non-driver ID, or learner’s permit can update their Donor Registry status online.

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