• THE NEED

There are more than 104,000 patients on the national organ transplant waiting list, each one reliant on the compassion and generosity of another for a life-saving gift. Of those, more than 5,000 are listed at transplant centers in Florida. While many will be transplanted, there are some who sadly will not. Their gifts will not come in time. Our vision is a transplant for every patient in need so that we no longer see deaths on the waiting list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Medical care is not affected in any way by your status as a registered donor. After an accident or injury, every attempt will be made to save your life by each health care professional involved in your care.

All major eastern and western religions either support donation or leave the decision up to the individual. If you would like additional information on the official position of your faith, please send us a message through the Contact Us page for a written statement.

Each donor is treated with great respect and dignity throughout the donation process, and the donor’s appearance following donation still allows for an open-casket funeral. Once the organ and/or tissue recovery process is completed, the body is released to the donor’s family for funeral arrangements.

The identity of all parties is kept strictly confidential; however, donor families and transplant recipients may receive generic information such as age and gender of their donor and the transplant recipients. LifeQuest encourages both recipients and donor families to write to each other, as this type of communication often helps ease the pain of a tragic death. If there is a mutual interest in direct communication, our family services staff will facilitate that.

Enrollment on the Joshua Abbott Organ and Tissue Donor Registry by anyone 18 years or older grants authorization for donation to take place. Should you be in the position to donate, your next of kin or legal guardian will be presented with documentation of your registration, but they will not be able to overturn your decision. Enrollment on the registry by those under the age of 18 is not binding.

Organs are allocated nationally based on a complex medical formula established by transplant doctors, public representatives, ethicists and organ recovery agencies. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains the list of patients waiting for transplants, and a potential donor’s blood type, tissue type, body weight, and size are matched against patients on the list. Priority is given to the sickest patients or, in the case of kidneys, those who have been on the waiting list the longest. Factors such as race, gender, age, income or celebrity status are never considered when determining who receives an organ.

Yes. People living with HIV can help others through the gift of donation at the time of their death as a result of the 2013 HOPE (HIV Organ Policy Equity) Act. The HOPE Act allows HIV+ people to donate organs to patients on the transplant waiting list who also are HIV+.