Posted By Westfield Health

Posted on30th July 2024

As we prepare for this year’s British Transplant Games, we are celebrating the gift of life that organ donation provides to recipient families across the UK. Westfield Health is proud to sponsor the Westfield Health British Transplant Games for the 16th year running, with the Nottingham Games taking place over Thursday 1 August – Sunday 4 August 2024. We’re sharing the story of Mahmud Nawaz, who lost his wife, Sharon, to a brain haemorrhage at the age of 32. Her organs were donated, saving the lives of four people, including a one and half year-old boy.

Mahmud Nawaz

Mahmud’s story

My wife collapsed with a brain haemorrhage and was taken to A&E by ambulance. They moved her to the intensive care unit – she had one breathe unaided that afternoon, so they couldn’t do the brainstem test to test if she had died until the next day.

The bereavement of a loved one changes your perspective on life, but for me, my wife was the first person that I knew that had died. Everything that I went through was very new, very raw. There was no playbook for how you’re meant to do it.

When I found out there was nothing I could do, the Sister in A&E put her arm around me and said “it will be alright, you will get through this” – and I really needed that. I was up in Yorkshire because of my wife, because she was from Yorkshire, her dad had a stroke the year before; we moved from London to Yorkshire, so I didn’t have any friends and family around when this happened, and I needed that compassion.

When I went to say thank you to the staff at the end of the week – that Sister in A&E that put her arm around me told me that her husband had died waiting for a kidney transplant.

For recipient families, organ donation can be their miracle. In my case, the smaller part of my wife’s liver went to a little boy who was one and half, and without it he wouldn’t have made it to two. It is the gift of life. For some it might enhance the quality of life, but for other patients organ donation means life. It can be that much of an important decision to say yes to donation.

How has your experience with organ donation impacted you?

That changed me. I wanted to give back and I wanted to share my story to help NHS Blood & Transplant and to encourage people to become organ donors. I joined an organ donation committee in Leeds and in Mid Yorkshire, then I became a non-executive director at Mid Yorkshire and now I’m a Chair at Chesterfield Royal.

It’s changed my life in terms of what happens to me and where I find my purpose; it’s made me realise that there are some incredible angels that work in our NHS. Whatever I can do to help support them, that’s why I’m here.

Within our Trust we’ve been working out how we can talk to transplant athletes that live in our patch that can share their story and be more involved with Chesterfield Royal, as well how they can inspire people in our communities to think about organ donation and how we can celebrate their successes at the British Transplant Games as well.

Why do you think the British Transplant Games are so important?

When I went the first time in Leeds in 2022, I was just in awe. Utterly hooked. It’s very rare that you get the whole community together in one place: people that work in transplantation and donation, people who have received an organ and people who have donated an organ – whether that be deceased donors with donor families like me or living donors.

It’s just a huge event. Going along for a weekend to enjoy the spirit of life and to celebrate that… It is intoxicating, it really is. That alone is worth going along to see the events and to see someone as young as three and as old as eighty competing and celebrating their gift of life is amazing.

For the Coventry 2023 Games I was given the honour of holding the placard and walking the donor family team out at the end of the opening ceremony. That was incredible. That was a really special moment for me. I had a great time watching different events and spending time with the donor family network. And this Games is going to be even bigger, so I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve got a bit of a hybrid role – I’m part of the East Midlands NHS community as well now, but I’m actually there as part of the donor family network.

Find out more about the 2024 Nottingham British Transplant Games.

Donor families

Why is the donation conversation essential?

The law changed in May 2020 to make organ donation an “opt out” instead of “opt in” system. You make the decision, but ultimately, it’s your family that has the final say for or against organ donation. If you tell your family your wishes, the consent rate jumps to 90% when asked. If you don’t, the consent rate drops to 60%. So that in its own right is how you save lives. If it inspires you to have the conversation and think about organ donation, there’s three calls to action:

  1. Make an informed choice about your decision on organ donation.

    Even if that decision is no – make a decision. You can do that with more information by going to www.organdonation.nhs.uk. Whether it’s questions about how the process works, religion or ethnicity. Whatever it might be that you might have questions or doubts about, all the information is right there.

  2. Tell your family, because they will be consulted.

    I was lucky that my wife told me what she wanted. I knew because she carried an organ donor card. She had a card in her purse, and I said, “what’s that?”. It was as simple as that, and then we had the conversation. It was both that she wanted to be an organ donor and where she wanted to be cremated. If you die at age 32 it’s not something you’ve necessarily had a chat about. Those two decisions were not something that I had to make at the worst possible time.

  3. Record your decision.

    You can record your decision on the NHS website, or on the NHS app. It only takes two minutes. You can go on the app under the ‘your health’ tab and see your decision, make your decision, change your decision. You can change it over time; it’s not fixed in stone.

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