A couple of years ago one of our local councillors, Chris Hogg, did an amazing thing. He donated one of his kidneys to his wife, the lovely Rachael.

Rachael’s health had been on the decline as a result of a virus she contracted while on holiday over twenty years earlier. At the time she had had a successful kidney donation but that was now starting to deteriorate. They had been looking for a kidney donor for some time with no luck and unsurprisingly were getting worried. So Chris decided to see if he could donate one of his kidneys. Amazingly he was a perfect match and the operation was organised. Fortunately it all went well and both of them are in robust health. If anything Chris is in a little too robust health and could do with cutting out a few biscuits.

Even more brilliant was they did not stop there. At the time Chris was Mayor of Kendal and he and the Lady Mayoress decided to take the opportunity to raise the issue of organ donation in the town. They announced that they wanted to use their time in office to make Kendal into an Organ Donor town. They set the target of achieving 1,000 more organ donors in the town during their time in office. As you would hope they smashed their target and since then the campaign has continued. Now just under half of the town is on the organ donor register which is just brilliant.

So I was really saddened to learn the other day that over the past five years nearly fifty people in Cumbria died waiting for an organ donation. For a long time I have been an advocate of what is called opt out donation. This approach means that rather than as now we have to register to say we want to donate our organs, the authorities assume we want to donate our organs unless we specifically say that we don’t want to. They already take this approach in countries like Spain and Belgium, even in Wales. So I was really pleased that our Government decided that we should change to the opt-out approach in this country.

But it isn’t happening until 2020. Over that time about 1,000 people will die in this country waiting for a donation. That is a tragic waste of life. I have written to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock asking him to bring forward his proposal. But we can all help. If you aren’t on the donor register get on one now. Importantly if you are registered tell your loved ones about your plans. We all need to do our bit to save the lives of people like Rachael.