Hospital receives medal of honor

[Guest guest]

Monday January 29, 2007 Hospital

receives medal of honor

Washington County Hospital received the Organ

Donation Medal of Honor from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

on Thursday, Jan. 18. Representatives from the

Transplant Resource Center of land, as well as a donor recipient and the

mother of an organ donor were among the guests at the ceremony held at the

hospital.

The Organ Donation Medal of

Honor is presented to hospitals for

achieving and sustaining a donation rate of 75 percent or more of eligible

donors. Washington County Hospital's donation rate - percentage of

families approached with the option of donation that chose to donate their

loved ones' organs - was 87.5 percent, up from 2005 when the hospital received the medal for a

rate of 83 percent. In 2006, the hospital had five

organ donors and 13 tissue donors. From the five organ

donors, multiple organs were donated, helping an average of four to five people

per donor.

Kennedy,

clinical director of the Transplant Resource Center of land, presented the

award. said that there are local people on the

waiting list for a transplant, but it is through the efforts of everyone at Washington

County Hospital that lives are saved.

Rye, hospital services

coordinator with the center, read a letter on behalf of Kailyn

Wroten Petty and Helen M. Chichester,

sister and mother of Jeffery A. Wroten, a

correctional officer at Roxbury Correctional Institution who was shot while

guarding an inmate at Washington

County Hospital in January 2006. Wroten's organs were donated after his death.

" By donating his organs we

could ensure that his life and his death were not in vain. He

would go on helping others. Jeff would have wanted

that, " Petty and Chichester wrote.

Harriett Heyman

of Baltimore attended the reception to share her story as a kidney donor

recipient. She received a transplant in 2001 after she

was diagnosed with renal failure, a condition in which the kidneys fail to

function properly.

" I wouldn't be here

without the gift I received from my donor, " Heyman

said.

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