ONE of the island’s leading renal transplant surgeons thinks the time has long come for Barbados to have brain death legislation, which would facilitate kidney transplants for scores of Barbadians.
Consultant general and head of surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Margaret O’Shea, made this call on Thursday night at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies during the Selma Reeves Memorial Lecture hosted by the Barbados Kidney Association in association with the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the university.
“We need the legislation in place; we really can’t go forward without it and I am happy to see that people want it,” she said.
Before an audience that included businessman Rawle Brancker, who has received a kidney transplant, O’Shea said that Government needed to push for legislation to govern the issue of deceased donation, which would create a wider pool for kidney transplant in Barbados.
