Coronavirus pressures 'put organ transplants at risk'

The UK's organ transplant network could be forced to shut down as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, the body that runs the scheme is warning.

One factor is the pressure on intensive care beds, according to NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT). But there is also the risk to transplant patients, who have their immune systems suppressed so their bodies don't reject new organs.

This is a dilemma for those like Ana-Rose Thorpe, from Manchester, who is waiting for a liver transplant.

Now aged 29, Ana-Rose has lived with hepatitis almost her entire life after contracting it as a baby. The disease has taken its toll and now her liver is failing and she is in desperate need of a transplant.

"Having to go into hospital while there are coronavirus patients there is very worrying," she says.

"Whilst my body could withstand the transplant, the longer I'm not being monitored, not being seen as often as I was, the longer I leave it, I could just get sicker and sicker.

"I feel like it's patients that are already on the transplant list, patients waiting for other operations, we have just been swept aside."

"It's my life - it is a matter of life and death," Ana-Rose says.

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Source: BBC News, 9 April 2020