Israel launches biggest-ever donor campaign

Transplant News,  March, 2007  

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Israel has launched its biggest donor recruitment campaign in history. Although there was an 84% increase in the number of Israeli citizens carrying ADI (the national registry of potential organ donors) donor cards, according to Israel Transplant and ADI, that represents only 7% of the population, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The campaign includes some novel initiatives. The Education Ministry has set a goal of encouraging 200,000 11th and 12th-graders to sign up at least one person a month. One thousand Rotary club members are committed to signing up 10 people each.

Previous campaigns have stressed the support of Orthodox religious figures. Rabbi Schlomo Aviner, a leading religious Zionist halacha authority, recently published an article with an unequivocal demand that people sign up for donor cards, the Post reported.

In his article, Aviner wrote that when it comes to organ donation, suddenly everyone, religious and non-religious alike, becomes a mystic, dithering as they reflect on such issues as the importance of the body in the resurrection of the dead, the Post said. Aviner dismisses such deliberations, saying there is nothing more important than donating organs that could save someone's life, and they should put the metaphysics aside.

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