UCI Medical Center flies Donate Life flag to honor organ donors
April 27, 2019
UCI Health flies the Donate Life flag in honor of organ donors.
UCI Medical Center hosted a flag raising ceremony today in honor of Donate Life Month. The OneLegacy annual flag raising event remembers those who have died in the past year, and were organ donors.
April is National Donate Life Awareness Month, and more than 114,000 people in the U.S. wait for lifesaving organ transplants.
According to Donate Life America, 22 people die each day because the organ they need is not available. Every 10 minutes, another person is added to the national transplant waiting list.
“My son said if anything ever happened to him, he wanted to be an organ donor,” said Maria Jimenez, whose 22 year-old son Adrian died in January 2014 from bacterial meningitis. “I’ve chosen to be a OneLegacy ambassador and continue to be his voice and spread his legacy of organ donation.”
OneLegacy, the non-profit, federally-designated organ recovery organization, works with hospital systems like UCI Heath to support families who make the decision to honor their loved ones by donating life-saving and healing organs and tissues for those in need.
According to OneLegacy, one donor can save and heal more than 75 people.
- Organ donation could save up 8 lives
- Cornea donation could give sight to 2 people
- Tissue donation could heal up to 75 people
UCI Health comprises the clinical enterprise of the University of California, Irvine. Patients can access UCI Health at primary and specialty care offices across Orange County and at its main campus, UCI Medical Center in Orange, California. The 417-bed acute care hospital provides tertiary and quaternary care, ambulatory and specialty medical clinics, and behavioral health and rehabilitation services. UCI Medical Center features Orange County’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, high-risk perinatal/neonatal program and American College of Surgeons-verified Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center and regional burn center. UCI Health serves a region of nearly 4 million people in Orange County, western Riverside County and southeast Los Angeles County. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.