Officials with the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency believe a new on-site clinic at their headquarters could help improve the timely recovery of organ and tissue donations.
There are approximately 1500 Mississippians on National Organ Transplant Waiting List. Most of those patients, nearly 1300 of them, are waiting for a kidney.
But a new clinical addition to the MORA headquarters in Flowood could speed up that process.
“Currently, most of the recovery of organs and tissues of people who have died happens in the hospital setting,” explains MORA Chief Medical Officer Doctor Shirley Schlessinger. “Often times, this ministry can disrupt flow in a hospital that’s got trauma coming in and other emergency things going on beyond the recovery of organs.”
The $2.2 million facility will make MORA one of only nine organ procurement organizations in the country to maintain an on-site surgical suite.
“We have had the situation over the years that we had organs placed for transplant, we wanted to get into surgery, we couldn’t get into surgery because of a variety of reasons and a couple of the organs failed before we could get into the recovery,” says Kevin Stump, the Chief Executive Officer for MORA. “With this ability, we’ll hopefully be able to prevent that from happening, and we’ll get more people transplanted and more families be able to donate.”
The agency plans to have the clinical addition fully functional by March of 2017.
