Could you be one in a million and help save lives?
- Aiming for an extra million adults to register their decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register (ODR) by 2027.
- Currently 29 million people have agreed to donate their organs after death.
- Evidence shows families support donation going ahead in 90% of cases if their relative is on the ODR. This drops to below 50% when they don’t know if they wanted to be a donor.
- Consent for organ donation has fallen from 69% in 2020/21 to 57% in 2025/26 .
NHS Blood and Transplant is calling on people in the Midlands to be ‘One in a Million’ by registering their decision to be an organ donor.
The plan announced today (5 August) is to increase the number of people in the UK on the NHS Organ Donor Register - aiming to increase from 29 million to 30 million people to be registered donors by the end of the year.
The challenge of gaining over a million first time UK registrations by the start of 2027 is designed to tackle the growing dilemma of declining family consent rates and ensure more lifesaving transplants can go ahead.
It comes as new figures published today, show that family consent or authorisation across the UK has dropped from 69% in 2020/21 to just 57% in 2025/26 – a fall of almost a fifth in five years – at the very moment when more people than ever are waiting for a life-saving transplant.
Organ donation is far more likely to proceed when someone has recorded their decision on the NHS Organ Donor Register. Last year, almost 90% of families supported donation when they knew their loved one had made their wishes clear.
Despite strong public support for organ donation in principle, consent at the time of death is falling. Almost 29 million people in the UK have already expressed their decision to be a donor via the NHS Organ Donor Register – with 3.9 million people in the Midlands already registering their decision to donate their organs after death.
NHS Blood and Transplant’s new ambition signals a clear national call to action: to close the gap between the public’s support for donation and the number of people who formally record their decision, and to ensure that every potential donor has the best chance of saving lives.
Sophie Myers, 35, from Worcestershire, made the decision, along with her family, to donate mum Elaine’s organs when she died suddenly in 2018, aged 55. She and sister Vickie knew it was what their mum wanted and they approached medics to see if it might be possible.
Sophie says: “It was the August Bank Holiday weekend when mum died. We’d all been together, as a family, at Camper Calling festival. It wasn’t far from home so on the Sunday morning, we decided to go and get showered and warm up because it had been really rainy. We enjoyed a family breakfast and watched some Sunday morning telly together. I didn’t live far from mum and dad, so I went back to my house, and my sister Vickie stayed with mum and dad. Mum was excited to go back to the festival; she was texting me about which bands we were going to see next.
“It was only 20 minutes after I’d been texting mum when Vickie called me – mum had walked down the stairs, sat on the bottom step and said she didn’t feel right, and that she had a really bad pain in her head. Dad took her to the sofa, where she became unconscious and Vickie began CPR. We called 999 and an ambulance came right away.
“In A&E we were told that mum had had a brain haemorrhage. A scan showed that it was ‘catastrophic’ and that the damage would be irreversible. It came out of nowhere. She’d had no symptoms and it could never have been detected before happening, it was completely unexpected.
“As soon as we knew mum wouldn’t pull through, Vickie and I knew that we needed to talk about organ donation, so we pulled Dad aside to discuss it.
“Mum always had an organ donor card in her purse. I remember being little, playing with her handbag and the bright pink card being in there. We knew it was important to her, so we didn’t really have to make a decision in that moment – she’d already made it for us years ago – we were just honouring her wishes.
“We approached the nurses to ask if she would be eligible to donate and she was. Donation meant that we got to spend additional time with mum, longer than we would have otherwise been able to. It meant that her immediate family, including my nan, grandpa and her brothers got to come and see her. We got to talk about her with the specialist nurse, Harpreet and explain how truly special she was. We even had a little smile as we told her things about mum.
“Harpreet even helped us make keepsakes that are truly special to us, including her handprint that we each now have framed.
“Every now and then, a nurse would come over and say ‘we’ve found another match!’ It felt somewhat hopeful. We kept thinking of the people who were getting a phone call saying ‘it’s time’.
Elaine saved four lives by donating her lungs, liver and both kidneys.
“Mum was just lovely. She was so kind, so thoughtful. She was always putting others first, she just wanted to look after everyone else, so it’s fitting that she’s even been able to do that in death. There are four people out there who are living full lives again now because of mum and that’s really comforting to know.
“Her legacy is so important and now, when we tell mum’s story, we don’t say she died and put a full stop at the end. We’re able to add a little comma, where we take a deep breath, carry on and get to tell them about this amazing thing she went on to do. If we weren’t sure what she would have wanted and we’d said no in that moment, it would be a huge regret now.
“Donation is so important – for the recipient, of course, but it’s also comforting for the donor family. By saying yes, we got to spend more precious time with mum, and we get to remember her alongside this incredible thing that she did, too. We get to know part of her lives on and is still helping people to this day, just as she spent her whole life doing.”
One person who knows how vital it is for families to support their loved one’s decision is 26-year-old Ashleigh Tucker from Coventry. She received a heart transplant earlier this year due to Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – a thickening of the heart muscle. The transplant wouldn’t have been possible without her donor’s family supporting their decision to give life to another.
“I had pneumonia when I was 10 months old and the virus attacked my heart which resulted in a dilated cardiomyopathy,” said Ashleigh. “It wasn’t until I was 15, that the consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital said it was hypertrophic – which means my heart muscle was becoming thicker. I was listed when I was little for a transplant at Great Ormond Street, but I got better and was taken off the list as they didn’t think it would benefit me at that time.”
Once Ashleigh was an adult, she was transferred to a different team at the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, and they put her on new medication. She was stable for a while, but during COVID times everything felt harder. Ashleigh was constantly breathless, exhausted, and things started getting worse. She continues:
“In November 2021, I ended up in hospital with bronchitis. They did an echocardiogram and found I was in heart failure. Hearing those words changes everything. The last few years were up and down. Some days just getting out of bed left me gasping. I tried rehab and new meds. I was in and out of hospital with chest pain and suspected myocarditis. It felt like every time I tried to get back on my feet; something knocked me back down.”
Ashleigh was then referred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where she was assessed and listed for transplant last summer and spent nine months waiting, not knowing when the call would come.
“I’d just come out of hospital after eight days and barely been home a week when the call came. It was a massive shock – QE had told me nothing was changing, so I wasn’t expecting anything at all. So, I was in shock when I got the call, she said.
“A heart had come in for someone on the super‑urgent list, but they were too sick for surgery. Because it was fast‑track, they needed someone close by, and they thought I was a match. I went completely blank. I was working from home, my mum was too, and I just pointed at my phone and then at my chest. I couldn’t speak. I was shaking. It didn’t feel real.
“Around half seven they took me down for my transplant. Even then, they couldn’t be certain until I was asleep that it would be viable and would go ahead as they needed to do extra checks. And because I’d had a defib fitted when I was 18, they told me the surgery would take longer.”
Ashleigh’s transplant went ahead and was successful. Now a few months down the line she is still in slow recovery. She still gets tired and her muscles are still weak, but she is soon to be starting cardiac rehab which will help with her recovery – none of which would have been possible without her donor family saying ‘yes’ to donation.
“I don’t think there are enough words for what donation really means to us as a family. It’s a crazy situation – the hardest thing a family will ever face – and somehow it still becomes a lifeline for someone else. Thank you just doesn’t seem enough.
“You can’t imagine losing someone you love. But maybe there’s a tiny bit of comfort in knowing that, through their gift, they’ve helped people keep living.”
While there were modest increases in organ donors and transplants across the UK last year, in the Midlands, both donor and recipient numbers remained relatively stable – with 318 people donating after death compared to 317 the previous year – the number of people in the region receiving transplants rose slightly to 711 from 707 last year. The figures underline a widening gap between the number of people who donate organs after death and those 1567 patients who are waiting for a transplant in the Midlands.
The Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Activity Report, published today, shows that in 2025/26 in the UK:
- 1,428 people donated organs after death, an increase of 2% on last year
- 4,666 patients received an organ transplant, an increase of 2% on last year
- the number of living donors increased by 2% to 1017, accounting for 42% of the total number of organ donors
- The number of corneal transplants increased by 6% offering the gift of sight to thousands of people in the UK
8,296 patients, including 241 children, were on the active UK transplant waiting list as of 31 March 2026 – the highest number on record.
Sadly, every day someone dies waiting for a transplant. Last year 434 patients died waiting (in the Midlands), and a further 899 patients were removed from the transplant list due to deteriorating health. Many of these patients would have died shortly afterwards.
Anthony Clarkson, Director of Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation at NHS Blood and Transplant said: “Family support for organ donation has been in steady decline over the last few years, and we need to reverse that trend. We understand that when families are approached about organ donation, they may be expected to make difficult decisions at an already tragic time. That’s why we are asking people in the Midlands to be ‘One in a Million’ and drive up the number of people on the NHS Organ Donor Register to 30 million by the start of 2027. It gives your family that certainty that you want donation to go ahead and it’s expected that they honour that decision.
“For many families though, even when their loved one has expressed a wish to donate, they still override that decision for whatever reason, meaning hundreds of potential organ transplant opportunities being lost each year.
“I would urge people who haven’t already done so to express your decision to donate via the Organ Donor Register and for families to remember that decision and honour it should the time come. It’s the final act you can do for them to honour their memory and leave a lasting legacy to be proud of.”
Alongside urging more people to register their decision and speak to their families, the NHS is also working to modernise systems and invest in innovation to help improve outcomes and make more transplants possible.
At the start of the year, a new report was produced which called for a ‘bolder, braver approach to organ donation.’ The Organ Donation Joint Working Group (ODJWG) was put in place in response to the transplant waiting list reaching a record high and nearly 5,000 people dying waiting for a life-saving transplant in the last decade.
Support for organ donation is strong in the UK with almost 29 million people having expressed their wish to donate on the NHS Organ Donor Register.
The ODJWG report sets 3 ambitions:
- Societal action in signing on to the NHS Organ Donor Register and consent matches the high levels of public support for organ donation in principle.
- A positive clinical donation culture is created through embedding the Specialist Nurse for Organ Donation within the hospital multidisciplinary team, ensuring families receive the best possible support and that the donor’s best interests remain paramount .
- Improve performance monitoring and provide ethical advice on current and emerging organ donation matters.
