ShareLife Australia

08/05/2026

Feedback on our post yesterday has been that it was too complicated.

The question that the Australian community needs answered is:-

Why has the consent rate for organ donation declined so much over the last 6 years while the registration rate for organ donation has increased?

Years and years of asking individuals to register and to discuss it with their family has had very little effect on the Consent rate and the Donation rate.

How do we improve this? ShareLife hopes that the Health Ministers start addressing this today at their meeting.

07/05/2026

Tomorrow, South Australia Health and Wellbeing Minister Blair Boyer will take the proposal for every state and territory to make organ and tissue donor registration available through driver’s licences to this week’s Health Ministers’ Meeting. This is an example of the articles that have been published in the last few days. https://glamadelaide.com.au/sa-leads-national-push-to-add-organ-donor-registration-to-drivers-licences/

While we at ShareLife support this proposal, we hope that the Ministers will try to gain a deeper understanding of the effect of registration for organ donation on the consent rate for organ donation.

The Australian community are told that, "A huge 74 per cent of South Australians are registered donors, compared with the national average of just 35 per cent." So how can the consent rate in South Australia in 2025 be 54%, only one percent higher than the national rate of 53%? How is it possible that 74% of the population are registered and their consent rate is only 54%? What is happening in the hospitals for this to happen? Journalists and politicians repeat these figures without giving any thought as to the accuracy. OTA continues to mislead the community by blaming the low consent rate solely on the Australian community rather taking ownership of the problem.

We are told that, "four in five Australians support organ donation while only about one in three are officially registered on the Australian Organ Donor Register." So how can this be true when the national consent rate was only 53% in 2025? Only 53% say yes when requested to donate a loved one’s organs but 80% of the community support organ donation? What is going on in the hospitals that the consent rate is so much lower than the rate of support in the community for organ donation?

Will the Health Ministers be told that there has been a dramatic decline in the consent rate in South Australia from 74% to 54% since 2019 despite a big increase in the percent of the total population registered from 55% to 61% over the same period.

Surely ShareLife cannot be the only ones to analyse the discrepancy between registration for organ donation and consent for organ donation. It is extremely concerning that in South Australia the registration rate has increased from 55.2% in 2019 to 61% in 2025 while the consent rate has declined from 74% to 54%. I hope Health and Wellbeing Minister Blair Boyer will be honest enough to provide this analysis when he takes the proposal to this week’s Health Ministers’ Meeting to make organ and tissue donor registration available through driver’s licences.

The national data presents a similar discrepancy, though the changes are smaller. Nationally, the registration rate has increased from 26.7%% in 2018 to 28.8% in 2025 while the consent rate has declined from 64% to 53%. I wonder whether the Health Ministers will be made aware of the facts.

23/04/2026

Thank you Channel 9 for this heart breaking but beautiful story.

After young father-of-two Tyler Dean died in a workplace accident in January, he saved six lives thanks to ...

21/04/2026

In our multi-cultural society, everyone with an interest in organ donation should have access to data as presented in this article for all the CALD communities in Australia. This is just the starting point for engagement.

Maybe there is a role for the Members of Parliament that represent these communities to play a constructive role?

Disproportionate need for transplants among Black Americans

12/04/2026

A wonderful story. We hope it inspires other families with a member suffering from kidney failure to do the same. More importantly, we hope it inspires the nephrology departments in all Australian hospitals to encourage and support families through this process.

Despite a 10-year age gap and geographical separation, Sajarn and Codey Stow have retained a close bond since childhood. That bond has only strengthened since Codey received a donor kidney from his brother last November.

13/03/2026

On 1 March 2026 Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care Rebecca White's media release claimed, "new data reveals more than 20,000 Australians given a second chance at life
Since the national DonateLife program began under a Labor Government, more than 20,000 Australians have received a life-saving transplant thanks to more than 7,500 deceased organ donors. https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp/media/new-data-reveals-more-than-20000-australians-given-a-second-chance-at-life?language=en

What she failed to tell you was that, for the last 6 years, there has been a declining consent rate in Australia. (54% in 2010, 64% in 2018 and 53% in 2025). The consent rate now is lower than it has ever been since the first consent rates were reported by DonateLife in 2010.

This is despite a pathetically small increase in the registration rate from 25.7% to 28.8% in the 18 years since the Authority was established in January 2009.

The organ donation rate dpmp is still less than it was in 2016.

Were it not for the introduction of the new protocol Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) in 2007, independent of OTA, the donation rate per million population (dpmp) in 2024 would have hardly increased since the establishment of the Organ and Tissue Authority. (DBD 11.0 to 11.9 dpmp). The substantial decline in Donation after Brian Death (DBD) since 2018 is a major concern. DCD increased from 1.1 dpmp in 2008 to 8.3 in 2025.

This leads one to question whether the reason for the decline lies in the processes in the Authority and in the hospitals and not out in the community. So far, the Minister's only contribution has been to blame the Australian population for not registering.

Two simple graphs reveal it all.

Minister please we need transparency and solutions. Those suffering from organ failure deserve better.

18/01/2026

Spain achieves 51.9 donors per million population in 2025. That is more than 2.5 times what Australia will probably achieve!

Spain has once again surpassed 6,300 organ transplants in a single year, consolidating its position as the world leader in organ donation and transplantation for 34 consecutive years.

20/12/2025

November data released by ANZOD reveals that it is likely Australia's Organ Donation Rate from deceased donors per million population (pmp) will come in at just under 20 for the year 2025. The official target of 25, well below the leading countries, was set so many years ago and has been conveniently forgotten.

But more importantly, the number of transplant recipients pmp has declined substantially since Covid. So many of those suffering from organ failure are missing out on this life saving treatment.

Hopefully in 2026, bipartisan political support will receive approval for substantial change in the organ donation bureaucracy.

29/11/2025

Why are the Australian authorities so secretive about the kind of information the NHS in the UK share with the public? Engaging with the public in a real and meaningful way educates the politicians, bureaucrats and the public at large.

Organ donation among people from ethnic minority backgrounds increased last year, but the number of people from these communities' receiving transplants fell slightly.

26/11/2025

What every transplant recipient dreams of.

The new grant will fund the enrollment of 10 additional patients in the trial and support research into the science behind immune tolerance.