Photo: Lindsay Ess at a United for UNOS event in October.
Richmond nonprofit’s network will expand under new guidelines
When you check the organ donor box on your driver’s license application, you’re probably thinking your heart, kidney or liver might go to save someone’s life in the event of your untimely death.
You’re probably not thinking that your face, hands or arms could also be removed and used to help someone who is seriously disfigured by burns, bomb blasts or disease.
Under new federal transplant policy, faces and hands and other body parts classified as vascularized composite allografts — VCAs for short — will fall under the National Organ Transplant Act.
That means face and hand transplant programs will have to meet the same strict regulations and standards as heart and liver programs, for instance — which could have been the case before but there wasn’t the formal oversight from the United Network for Organ Sharing, the Richmond-based organization that has a federal contract to oversee and manage the nation’s transplant system.
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"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.
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