'Organs scandal could cost the life of our baby girl'

THE parents of a six-day-old girl who will die within days without a liver transplant today made an emotional plea in the wake of the Alder Hey scandal, which is being blamed for a nationwide shortage of donated organs.

Maebh Bradley, who weighs 5lbs, is being kept alive by machines in the intensive care unit of King's College Hospital, Camberwell, because of the acute liver failure she suffered at birth.

Senior surgeons say her life could be saved within 12 hours of receiving a donated liver, but the supply has dried up since the revelations that children's organs had been stored without their parents' permission at Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital.

Doctors believe parents are now reluctant to offer their children's organs for donation following death. Transplant pioneer Sir Magdi Yacoub warned: "A large number of patients will almost certainly die if this trend continues."

Maebh's parents, Marie and Tommy Bradley, farmers from Ireland, have already lost two babies to liver failure.

Mr Bradley said: "We have lost two children already and it's incredibly important to us that this time the operation goes ahead so that Maebh comes out alive. If she gets a liver, she will live, it's that simple.

"We would say to parents who are unsure about whether to allow the organs of their child to be donated that we know what it is like to lose a child and if they say yes to donation then although they have lost one child, they have allowed another seven or eight to live.

"We were totally shocked when we were told that Maebh had this condition, it's a rare condition with only three cases in Ireland. In one of those cases the child had a transplant and is now strong and healthy. which proves it can work. It's quite simply a case of saving her life. Without a transplant she will die and the longer she goes without the operation the less chance she will have if an organ should then come along."

Senior transplant surgeon at King's College, Nigel Heaton, warned that many of his other patients, including a woman in her twenties, could also die in days because of the lack of organ donations.

Mr Heaton, 45, said: "Normally we would perform between three and four operations a week. In the last nine days we haven't performed any because we have had no organs.

"We have had quiet periods before but I have never known anything like this. At first I thought it might just be us, but having spoken to other people across the country it would seem the number of donated organs, not just for livers, but also pancreas, hearts and kidneys, has fallen dramatically.

"I think because of the adverse publicity over Alder Hey hospital people have become confused over the retention of organs without permission after someone has died, and the donation of organs to save lives."

Mr Heaton, who has 50 patients waiting for a transplant including 15 children, said that although specially trained professionals ask bereaved relatives for organ donations, he had heard of relatives who had specifically cited the Alder Hey scandal as their reason for refusing a transplant request.

The fall in donated organs, which has also affected the number of heart operations carried out by Sir Magdi at Harefield in Hertfordshire, is blamed on the controversy surrounding revelations that pathologist Dick van Velzen had stored body parts at Alder Hey without permission.

Professor van Velzen, 51, former head of pathology at the Alder Hey, today threatened to name up to 40 colleagues he alleges were also involved in the scandal, claiming dozens had also concealed body parts taken from children.

Speaking from Holland, he said: "I have not taken organs without parents' permission. I've carried out post mortems either with parental consent or on behalf of the coroner. People forgot to tell the parents what a post mortem actually is. It is terrible, but it is not my fault."

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.