Challenges of Implementing a Donation Service in Rural and Remote Australia

Nichalas Nuttall¹, Lee Wood², Kelly Anstey², Dianne Stephens²

¹Organ and Tssue Donation Service, Metro South Health, Woolloongabba, Australia, ²DonateLife NT, Northern Territory Department of Health, Darwin, Australia

Eye and tissue banks are established in the five mainland states and in the Australian Capital Territory. The Northern Territory has 233 000 people spread over 1.3 million square kilometres. Organ Donation programs have been implemented in the two larger centres in Darwin and Alice Springs, but the Territory, the country's third largest jurisdiction  does not have the population to develop its own tissue bank. in 2011 DonateLife Northern Territory formed a partnership with Queensland Eye Bank in Brisbane, 3400 km to the south-east to facilitate an eye donation program in the Northern Territory. The project uncovered some unique challenges such as:

1. Before a a patient can be considered for donation, an airline schedule must be consulted to determine if timelines can be met if donation is to be undertaken.

2. No federal legislation overiding state legislation (e.g. The USA's Uniform Anatomical Gift Act), thereby complicating the donation process where donor assessment, consent and tissue recovery occurs under Northern Territory legislation and processing, assessment, storage and allocation of the tissue occurs under the auspices of Queensland legislation.

3. The legislative instruments are not necessarily compatible.

4. The travelling time of tissue restricts the number of patients that can donate eye tissue (by reducing recovery time-lines) compared with patients in metropolitan Brisbane.

Nevertheless the project phase is almost complete with only service level agreements to be signed before implementation can occur. By the time this paper is presented , the program should have commenced and the first patients should have been able to donate eye tissue for transplantation.