Mum needs transplant, denied daughters donor organs

windcatcher · Apr 13, 2008

Story is here:

With her mother desperately in need of a transplant, Laura Ashworth told family and friends she wanted to donate one of her kidneys.

So when the 21-year-old died after an asthma attack, it seemed that the tragedy would at least give Rachel Leake a chance of a healthy new life.

But because Laura had not begun the formal process of becoming a "living donor," the authorities refused to let her mother receive her organs. Instead they went to strangers at the top of the waiting list.

Rachel Leake says her daughter Laura 'would be devastated that she was not able to help me'

"All I wanted to do was carry out her wishes," said 39-year-old Mrs Leake.

"She would have been so upset that she was not able to help her mum. Even the transplant coordinator was crying her eyes out. She really tried to get her bosses to change their minds but they would not budge."

Although the Human Tissue Authority has the power to allow "directed" donor requests of this kind, a blanket ban is in force while an ethical review of such transplants is carried out.

Despite an appeal to health ministers by the family's MP, Gerry Sutcliffe, Laura's kidneys went to a man in Sheffield and a man in London, while her liver was given to a 15-year-old girl.

Mrs Leake urgently needs another kidney and as a diabetic she could also have benefited from receiving her daughter's pancreas.

She had a kidney transplant five years ago, but the donated organ failed last year and she needs dialysis in hospital three times a week to stay alive.

She said: "I am angry, really angry. I am not finding comfort in the fact that she helped three people. I just want Laura."

A single mother working for a vehicle management company, Laura lived her mother, grandfather and two-year-old daughter Macie in a £400,000 farmhouse at Bierley, near Bradford.

She had always been asthmatic and used an inhaler. On March 31 she suffered a coughing fit and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Her mother called an ambulance, but by the time paramedics arrived her brain had been starved of oxygen.
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Mum needs transplant, denied daughters donor organs

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