Christ Hospital observes Donate Life Month | Health

CINCINNATI (FOX19) - The Christ Hospital, in partnership with LifeCenter, will celebrate the start of National Donate Life Month with a flag raising ceremony outside the main hospital entrance on Monday at 9:30 a.m. The Donate Life flag will be displayed throughout the month of April in recognition of the many lives saved each year through organ donation.

Featured speakers at the flag raising ceremony will include Jerry Burris, who received a kidney in 2010 from his daughter, who works in the field of hemodialysis, and Mark Zimmerman, supply chain executive director for The Christ Hospital whose daughter received her second kidney transplant in March and will attend The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences this fall.

National Donate Life Month, celebrated each April, was instituted by Donate Life America and its members in 2003 and serves to encourage more Americans to choose to become organ donors. According to LifeCenter, there are more than 113,000 people in the U.S. awaiting a life-saving transplant, including more than 3,000 people in Ohio and over 500 in Greater Cincinnati.

More than 1,600 kidney transplants have been performed at The Christ Hospital since the transplant program was initiated in 1972. The program has grown to become one of the most successful renal transplant programs in the country. Today, donor operations are performed 100 percent laparoscopically, which allows the operation for the donor to be performed with just a few small incisions and shortens the recovery period.

For more information about kidney transplantation at The Christ Hospital, call the Kidney Transplant Center at 513-585-2493.

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