VCU news

By Anne Dreyfuss
C. Kenneth and Dianne Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research

In recognition of April being National Donate Life Month, the VCU Health Hume-Lee Transplant Center is raising a Donate Life flag outside VCU Medical Center that will fly throughout the entire month. After April, the flag will be raised whenever an organ donation occurs from a living or deceased donor at Hume-Lee Transplant Center or VCU Medical Center. This is the first time the flag is being raised at VCU Medical Center.

The selflessness of our organ donors and their families is so critical to the life-saving mission of organ transplantation.

A ceremony marking the raising of the flag will be held on April 1 at 10 a.m. and will begin inside the first-floor lobby of the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Medical Education Center at 1201 E. Marshall St. Marlon Levy, M.D., director of the Hume-Lee Transplant Center, and Brian Shepard, CEO of United Network For Organ Sharing, will speak at the event. Following their remarks, the ceremony will move outside VCU Medical Center where the flag will be raised.

“We are so pleased to be able to support organ donation by prominently flying the Donate Life flag,” Levy said. “The selflessness of our organ donors and their families is so critical to the life-saving mission of organ transplantation. Hume-Lee is proud to honor them and to continue the tradition of pioneering advances in transplantation.”

VCU Medical Center has the highest volume of donors throughout the donor service area, which includes Hampton Roads and Richmond. Hume-Lee Transplant Center performed Virginia’s first human kidney transplant and liver transplant, and is one of the leading transplant programs in the U.S., with survival rates that are among the best in the state, in accordance with the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.

National Donate Life Month, which was developed by Donate Life America, spearheads local, regional and national activities that encourage Americans to register as organ, eye and tissue donors, and to celebrate those who have saved lives through the gift of donation. According to Donate Life America, nearly 124,000 men, women and children are awaiting organ transplants in the United States, including 3,200 Virginians.

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