Medical Director Bulletin

Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Directorate December 2025 to January 2026

A message from Professor Derek Manas, Medical Director OTDT:

Hello once again from me and the Clinical Team. It's Christmas again and I'm sure we are all looking forward to some time off and reconnecting with family and friends.

It's been an extremely busy year, and I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work done over the last 9 months by all the members of my team, the wider clinical team, advisory group support and administrative support teams. All of your contributions have made such a difference and have helped to move many of the OTDT initiatives forward in the right direction. So, thank you from me for your unwavering support and commitment.

Firstly, I would like to introduce my 2 Deputies (who may need no introduction to many of the clinical community) as this role expands and I slowly try and move towards winding down. Professor John Casey who has been a previous chair of PAG, chaired the ISOU working group on ARCs and is an experienced transplant surgeon in Edinburgh will take on the role of Deputy Medical Director for Clinical Pathways and Dr Rommel Ravanan will be my Deputy for Research & Development.

As is usual, we have some personnel changes – firstly we say goodbye to Chris Callaghan who has been the AMD for Organ Utilisation. Chris has been the driving force behind the vision and changes in organ utilisation over the last 7 years. His leadership and commitment has been extraordinary, and his legacy will live on in the Organ Utilisation Development Team. Chris will take on a new role as Chair of the Pancreas Advisory Group and the current Chair, Steve White, will demit his role after his 5-year tenure.

Steve's commitment and enthusiasm has been evident during a challenging time for pancreas transplantation, and I’d like to thank Steve for all he has done in his role. Jas Palmer who is the current Chair of CTAG (Lungs) has taken on a role as the AMD for Patient Engagement and will demit his advisory group chair role as soon as a replacement is in place – and that role has now been advertised.

I'd also like to welcome the ARC Organ Specific Leads (Andy Fisher – Lung; David Nasrella – Liver; James Hunter – Kidney) and the ARC Program Team.

A special thanks to Doug Thorburn and the NLOS Review Committee who have now completed their review, and it will now move into the implementation phase to be led by Ian Rowe and Lisa Mumford. Doug has recently been appointed as the Interim National Clinical Director for Transplantation in NHS England, and I'm sure you will join in congratulating Doug and look forward to working closely with him.

The Headlines

SCORE

The Sustainability and Certainty in Organ Retrieval continues to progress its work. Shadow modelling will start in January and continue during 2026 with a potential start date for implementation in January 2027.

It is important to ensure centres engage with their trust management to understand the implications. For more UpToDate detail the SCORE newsletter will be coming out in tandem with this bulletin.

Histopathology

Work of the interim plan has finally reached a point where we have got funding agreements in place to progress a national plan. Hopefully over the next few months we will be able to report on a start date. I do want to thank Meena Saroy, Desley Neil, Emma Billingham and Sarah Watson (NHS England) and the working group that have put a huge amount of time and effort into this.

Living Donor Liver Transplantation (LDLT)

Once again, I am pleased to report that the Proctor Team initiative launched in June 2024, continues to be extremely successful – and I would like to thank Lisa Burnapp for her commitment and leadership as well as acknowledging the proctor team for their work in supporting this initiative.

Please see Lisa’s report later in the bulletin. Just again to remind everyone, the website has all the information centres need to engage the proctor team and there is educational resource for clinicians and patients as well as a link to patient educational films available 

Cardiothoracic transformation program

The NHS England Transformation program for Cardiothoracic Transplant Services led by Maggie Kemner continues its work, and a number of OTDT clinical members are involved as stakeholders in the work. Currently there are a number of workstreams established and we await the outcome.

ISOU and Organ Utilisation Group (OUG)

ISOU has now completed its work, and I would like to acknowledge and thank William Vineall and John Forsythe for their leadership and commitment to seeing this through. All the ISOU sub-groups have reported, and the recommendations have been approved by Ministers. In the latter half of the year, we had a Symposium on ‘Workforce in Transplantation’ and more recently the symposium on 'Data Linkage'. Both symposia were very fruitful and are having their reports finalised for approval.

The International Donation Action Forum took place on the 2 to 6 June 2025 with several international experts. This was a joint initiative between DHSC and NHSBT – to review our donation processes.

Those in attendance were:

• Jorge Lopez, expert in Clinical Practice/Family Consent Research from Spain
• Eduardo Minambres, expert in Clinical Practice from Spain
• Nichon Jansen, expert in Policy Development from the Netherlands
• Jenny Ryan, expert in Communications from Canada
• Brianna Elms, expert in Communications from Australia
• Alison Hodak, expert in Nursing from Australia
• David Fleming, expert in Communications from the USA
• Jessica Cooper, expert in Donor Family Rep. from the UK
• Malcolm Rogers, expert in Donor Family Rep.  from the UK

The ODJWG and IDAF Report identified 10 Actions:

1. Strong, recognisable organ donation brand
2. Maximise potential of the ODR
3. Positive marketing messaging not legalistic Clinical Practice:
4. Honouring decisions to donate, including exploring option for donation outside the ICU, supported by up to date clinical, ethical and legal guidance. (Increase NDT)
5. Collaborative, positive and team-based family approach.
6. Move away from the current focus on law interpretation during the family approach.
7. Make the organ donation processes and family discussion as simple as possible.
8. Develop Multi-Disciplinary Team approaches to organ donation, for training and operational delivery.
9. Improve performance data, monitoring and management. (Structures, family feedback)
10. UK DEC 2.0

I would like to acknowledge the work done by the joint working group that made this possible and included the Director of OTDT Anthony Clarkson, AMD for Donation Dale Gardiner, Claire Williment, John Forsythe, AD for Donation John Richardson, Chief Nurse for OTDT Olive McGowan and many others.

The Trust Engagement document advising Trusts/Boards on the requirements expected of local trust Organ Utilisation Committees and what to monitor has now been sent to all transplanting hospitals and many of you will hopefully be working with your trust management to put this in place.

Again, a big thanks to Chris Callaghan and Mark Cubbon for all their work on this

The National Transplant Clinical Panel (NTCP)

The Transplant Oversight Group (TOG) which is a committee in parallel between NHSBT and NHSE chaired by Matt Day and Anthony Clarkson have now endorsed a sub-committee the NTCP which will be an operational group chaired by myself and Doug Thorburn with a specific remit: to assess quality, manage risk and review with emerging concerns – and escalate to TOG and the appropriate authority as required. It will meet bi-monthly.

OUG Implementation by NHSBT is now business as usual

Organ Utilisation continues to hold up well, and this will be due to a combination of the impact of CLUs on culture change and use of machine perfusion technology. Some possible metrics are being developed.

ERAS, Clinical Collaborative, Sustainability Agenda

Please see below for further information.

Finally:

Wishing you all a wonderful family filled Merry Christmas and see you on the other side.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Derek Manas
Medical Director – OTDT
NHS Blood Transplant

Obituary, in memory of Sir Terence English

Read the obituary for Sir Terence English

Message from Anthony Clarkson, Director of OTDT Directorate

We have now successfully concluded the recruitment of the Assistant Director for Transplantation and I'm very pleased to inform you that following a competitive recruitment process, Nick Earl has been appointed into the role.

Nick joins us from the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board where he has held several senior leadership positions, and his career experience and leadership style will add great value and compliment those in our team. I very much look forward to welcoming Nick into the team on the 12 of January 2026.

Message from the Organ Utilisation Development Team

At the end of January 2026, Chris Callaghan, will be stepping down from his role as Associate Medical Director for Organ Utilisation. His contributions to OUDT and CLUs have been fundamental, overseeing the launch of the CLU scheme, and shaping its efficacy, through to ensuring the CLUs receive sustainable funding, as confirmed in April 2025. We are very grateful for Chris’ excellent work and wish him the very best in hew new role as PAG Chair.

Vicky Gerovasili and Nick Inston will remain as National Lead CLUs and will also share a strategic leadership role overseeing organ utilisation. The national lead CLU role for both lung and for kidney will be advertised shortly in support of this.

Last year, we saw the launch of the standardised framework for organ decline meetings and introduced a regular monthly forum with our Organ Donation colleagues, to align our work more effectively together. We also held the 5th annual National Organ Utilisation Conference on 13 November, in Birmingham. This session enjoyed good attendance and robust discussion. Thank you to Carrie Scuffell, Vicky Gerovasili and Nick Inston for their excellent organisation of this event, and Tanya Machale and team for their administrative support.

In 2026, we have a busy year planned within the Organ Utilisation Development Team and Clinical Leads for Utilisation (CLU) community. Some of our priorities for the year ahead include:

• We are excited to confirm the 2nd cardiothoracic utilisation conference, to be held in London on Thursday 18 June 2026. Further updates are to follow.
• We continue to build on the success of the Offer Review Scheme, currently exploring ways to expand this, through changes to high quality donor (HQD) definitions, as well as considering other criteria such as late declines and expanding non-clinical declines to include non-HQD.
• We continue to offer support to Local CLUs as they work with their Trust boards to develop their local Organ Utilisation (OU) strategies. A supporting toolkit and FAQ's document have been circulated to all CLUs.
• Development of an Organ Utilisation Education Strategy.
• Focus on increasing patient engagement within organ utilisation.

For the latest information regarding the OUDT's work, check their webpage. You can also get in touch with the team through their email organutilisationdevelopmentteam@nhsbt.nhs.uk.

With best wishes.
The Organ Utilisation Development Team,
Chris Callaghan, Nick Inston, Vicky Gerovasili, Carrie Scuffell, Lauren Caddick, Laura Barton and Organ Lead CLUs

Message from Richard Baker, Associate Medical Director for Governance/Patient Safety

Greetings from the Governance Grotto!

2025 has been a challenging year but once again the UK transplant community has stepped up to deliver a truly extraordinary amount of work. Retrieval teams attended more than 1400 donors and managed to facilitate more than 3500 deceased donor transplants.

These donors are becoming older with more comorbidities and the majority are now DCDs. Despite these changes the outcomes remain consistently good and the number of Patient Safety incidents remains stable. This is even more remarkable given the increasing complexity of deceased donation with normothermic regional perfusion and machine perfusion technologies. Viewed in this light it is testament to the dedication and resilience of the clinical teams within the transplant community.

As ever, colleagues have continued to engage with the governance process which makes it such an enjoyable job to do. Without your help the Patient Safety team would really struggle, so thank you!

As I continue along my journey in Clinical Governance it becomes increasingly obvious that the process is an educational one. As Henry Ford once said, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing”. One the mantras of my job is that governance is not about “Who?”, but “Why?”. To that end I have selected a few themes from the year.

Donor Derived Disease

We continue to see cases of donor transmitted disease which is a reminder that transplantation can never be a risk-free endeavour. We have seen cases of donor derived metabolic, genetic, infectious and neoplastic diseases over the last twelve months. Unfortunately, severe disease following transmission of disease caused by human herpes viruses persists despite thorough screening carried out during donor characterisation. Thanks largely to efforts of my colleague, Ines Uchiro-Lumb, we now have two years of data regarding donors who are HHV-8 IgG positive. The greatest risk seems to be in donors who are HHV-8 DNA positive by PCR. HHV-8 transmission has not caused many clinical issues in renal transplant recipients. However, in liver transplant recipients there is a small but significant amount of serious morbidity and mortality. This needs to be reflected in the consent process but generally having a liver transplant with this risk will be better than the risk of not having one.

Retrieval

We do continue to receive reports of organ damage and less frequently organ loss. However given the volume of work that is taking place it represents a tiny percentage. This is testament to the skill and flexibility of the retrieval teams. We have registered several incidents relating to pancreas retrieval and the new technologies in DCD retrieval. There are learning points that we intend to communicate at the advisory group meetings, in our “Cautionary Tales” newsletter and at next year’s retrieval forum.

The Patient Safety team remain here to work with you and provide support if required so if you have query then please ask. I wish you all a very happy festive period and look forward to a successful 2026 that allows us to deliver more transplants to those who need them.

Richard

Patient Safety Team Updates

Cautionary Tales - Sharing learning from events across the organ donation and transplant pathway

You can read the most recent Cautionary Tales newsletter on our website - provided by Jeanette Foley, Deputy Chief Nurse OTDT.

A powerful reflection on leadership communication (PDF 120KB)

This document has been provided by Olive McGown, Chief Nurse, OTDT.

Message from Lisa Burnapp, Associate Medical Director, Living Donation

Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) in Transplantation

We are delighted that the on-line ERAS in Transplantation, Adult Liver Transplant Recipient Package was released on 15 December 2025.

This is the culmination of 2 years work under the leadership of Mike Spiro and Ben Stutchfield and their dedicated multi-disciplinary workstream, all of whom are to be congratulated for bringing together national and international experience and evidence to inform this excellent resource.

The adult liver transplant package joins the adult kidney transplant package, which was released in 2024 and the living kidney donor package is due for release in January 2026. On-going workstreams include adult pancreas/kidney pancreas recipient and adult lung transplant recipient and a living liver donor workstream will be stood up in January.

Through the ERAS in Tx. Project, NHSBT aims to make evidence-based 'template' pathways, tools and resources available to all transplant programmes so that clinical teams can more easily implement ERAS for their living donors and transplant recipients.

All packages are co-produced with patients and/or living donors and will be revised and updated as required so that they remain relevant to clinical practice. Particular thanks are due to Carrie Scuffell, ERAS Subject Matter Expert, who has overseen the coordination of the detail and final production of each on-line package and the NHSBT Content Team who have been instrumental in enabling the digital releases.

You can find out more about ERAS and access pathway information on the ODT Clinical website

If you'd like to contact us or be involved in any of the workstreams reach out via erasfortransplant@nhsbt.nhs.uk.

Living Donor Liver Transplantation: Adult to adult Proctor Team initiative

The Proctor Team initiative was launched in June 2024, under the auspices of the LDLT Project, to offer improved access to LDLT for adult recipients through expansion of the programme. To date, 25 referrals have been received into the Proctor Team from 5 of 6 eligible centres and 8 successful transplants have been performed at Leeds, King's and Royal Free hospitals for their own recipients together with patients referred from Birmingham and Edinburgh.

This represents an upward trend in engagement and activity year to date, with 'proctored cases' representing a third of LDLT activity. NHSBT has been awarded sustainable funding for the multi-disciplinary Proctor Team until June 2027 to offer support and preceptorship to liver transplant centres who wish to develop their adult-to adult programmes further.

The LDLT Project will come to a close in March 2026 with the establishment of a UK Living Liver Donor Registry to collect clinical and self-reported data from living liver donors. The Proctor Team initiative will continue (as above) under the governance of NHSBT ODT Medical Director.

Living Donation Futures Programme

NHSBT has invited key representatives from across both the kidney and liver transplant communities to join a 'think tank' style meeting on Monday 19th January to consider how NHSBT could support initiatives to expand living donation activity and increase transplant opportunities for patients through living donation.

We hope that this will generate some new ideas and inform future workstreams with wider involvement from professional and patient communities and commissioning colleagues. We will provide further updates in this bulletin as the programme develops.

Many thanks,
Lisa

Message from Laura Barton, OTDT Programme Manager:

The Implementation Steering Group for Organ Utilisation (ISOU) met for the final time on 19 November 2025. At this meeting the tremendous work of all parties, contributing to the improvement of organ utilisation, was recognised by all. This year we achieved our highest OU rates to date, demonstrating the positive impact our collective work is having.

Colleagues within NHSBT and across the transplant community have had a key role in driving excellency within organ utilisation, and we thank you all for your hard work.

A number of the Organ Utilisation Group’s (OUG) initial recommendations are still in progress, some have only just begun, and ISOU’s subgroups made a number of additional recommendations, which require focus and action.

Delivery of the Organ Utilisation Group (OUG) recommendations continues to be a core focus of NHSBT’s work, and oversight of this will be through a combination of the National Clinical Panel, which I chair, and the Transplant Oversight Group. NHSBT remain fully committed to improving organ utilisation, and realising our ambition of equity for all patients. and improving their experiences and their outcomes.

As part of this, you will hopefully be aware of initial investment into the ARCs Programme, confirmed in late June 2025. The team have been working hard to setup the programme, with pilot due to start in early 2026, to help us define the clinical service model and target operating model.

The pilots, across lung, liver and kidney, will create additional transplant activity throughout 2026, and this activity will support our Outline Business Case, to be submitted to DHSC in January 2027. Our long-term vision remains to commission 2-3 national multi-organ ARC centres, to provide equitable access to machine perfused organs across the UK.

Beyond ARCs there is lots of progress being made in relation to other organ utilisation initiatives, and the Organ Utilisation Group recommendations, of which a brief snapshot includes:

• Patient Engagement – Liz Armstrong and her Transplant Development Team have worked hard this year to ensure the patient voice is central to all our work. They have recruited patient partners for all solid organ advisory groups, and updated Terms of Reference to ensure quoracy relies on their attendance. Building on this work, the first Patient Advisory Group meeting will take place in early 2026. Jas Parmar, in his role as AMD for Patient Engagement, will play a key role in this workstream going forward.
• Clinical Leads for Utilisation – with baseline funding now confirmed, the scheme goes from strength to strength, and the Organ Utilisation Development Team (OUD) have provide a detailed update on their work below.
• Transplant Collaboratives – both renal and liver transplant collaboratives have been fully established, and initial discussions are underway regarding the establishment of paediatric transplant collaboratives and cardiothoracic transplant collaboratives.
• Defining Optimal Organ Utilisation – A Delphi study was launched in September 2025 to support the development of this definition. The first questionnaire round has now closed, with contribution from 67 panel experts, across the UK and Europe. This study is being facilitated by NHS Blood and Transplant in conjunction with the Council of Europe. The results from this first round are in the process of being analysed, and the second round questionnaire is expected to be published in late January 2026.
• National Outcome Measures - An inter-organisational working group, with input from universities, researchers and third sector representatives, meets 6-weekly to provide oversight to the development of Patient Report Outcome Measures (PROMs) and Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs). The group focuses on delivering: Development of a kidney transplant PREM and PROM; Tool updates and licensing ongoing in relation to the Liver PREM, as well as the Kidney DREMs and DROMs tools; and development of a single solid organ PROM, plus a cardiothoracic PREM. Once the tools are developed, consideration on how best to rollout the tools nationally is required

If you have any queries regarding the organ utilisation initiatives please contact the Portfolio Manager for Organ Utilisation, Laura Barton (laura.barton@nhsbt.nhs.uk).

Thank you very much.
Kind regards
Laura

Message from Matt Welberry Smith, Chair of the Environmental Sustainability in Transplantation (ESIT) group

Since our last update, the Environmental Sustainability in Transplant (ESIT) group have been delivering Environmental Sustainability Training to support colleagues in actively thinking about how they can influence sustainable practices in their workplaces. To support this work, we have been developing a self-scoring Dashboard around sustainable practices which all centres will be asked to complete to help collate a national picture of environmental sustainability practices. 

The group also has also been preparing a National SUSQI project to look at rationalising surgical trays in transplantation, reducing clinical waste and carbon footprint. This is due to launch in January 2026.

The project will guide participants through reviewing clinical instruments used in operations. There will be a series of webinars held to guide all centres through the process, and we hope that representatives from as many centres get involved as possible. Anyone can sign up, even if you’ve not worked in this area before, contact ESIT@nhsbt.nhs.uk.

We are also growing our champions network, and welcoming new members all the time. If you would like to get involved, please contact us through the email address above and one of the team will be in touch. You can also sign the pledge and commit to change through our form.

Matt Welberry Smith
Renal Transplant Physician & ESIT Chair

Message from Debbie Macklam, Head of Service Development, NHSBT:

Perfusion Technology in Organ Retrieval

It was fantastic to receive notification earlier this year that funding has been awarded by the UK Health Departments, on a substantive basis, from April 2025 to support the use of perfusion technology at the point of organ retrieval.

Business cases for both cardiothoracic (DCD Hearts) and abdominal (Abdominal Normothermic Regional Perfusion (ANRP) perfusion technologies were developed several years ago, each outlining their benefits including an increase in both the number and quality of organs available for transplant.

This funding award represents a pivotal moment in the development and long-term use of perfusion technology to support retrieval of organs, and I’d like to thank all of those who have been on the journey and have input/supported over the years of development.

This is especially important news as donors continue to be more weighted towards DCD donors than DBD donors c60:40.

ANRP

ANRP is the process of perfusing all the abdominal organs using warm, oxygenated blood. It helps to slow down the retrieval process and makes it more like a DBD retrieval, providing increased time to undertake the process and resulting in less retrieval damage than standard DCD.

Establishing a perfusion flow through the organs allows biochemical assessment of the liver to remove uncertainty regarding its likely future function. This increases the confidence of surgeons to accept DCD livers, expanding organ utilisation from our donors. This confidence also extends to those livers from more marginal and older donors.

There is clear, evidenced results highlighting improved quality and beneficial outcomes for both liver and kidney recipients.

ANRP was pioneered in the UK by National Organ Retrieval Service (NORS) teams in Edinburgh and Cambridge, with initial financial support from NHSBT for a service evaluation.

Funding for ANRP has been ad hoc and as other NORS centres began to explore the use of ANRP they secured internal charitable or non-recurrent funding to support development.

NHSBT established the ANRP Steering Group with representation from all abdominal retrieval centres in 2019 to develop and provide:

• Governance
• Clinical Protocols
• Operational processes and procedures
• Mentoring support (direct/indirect)
• Education and shared practice

The ANRP steering group has supported centres to establish their programmes and currently seven of the ten abdominal NORS centres have an ANRP programme of varying degrees of rota cover.

Due to the ad hoc funding over the years, retrieval using ANRP has evolved at differing paces. Following the UK Health department support and subsequent substantive funding award, we have seen the use of ANRP at DCD donors increase from 8% in 2019/20 to 27% for the first 6 months of 2025/26.

There also been a corresponding increase in the number of livers transplanted from the offers made, increasing from 17% in 2019/20 to 39% in the first 6 months of 2025/26.

The successful outcomes and the award of substantive funding will drive the future roll out of ANRP across all NORS retrieval teams for use at DCD donor retrievals.

DCD Hearts

Prior to the introduction of the perfusion technology at the point of retrieval, hearts from Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) donors could not be retrieved and transplanted. Since then, by using perfusion technology to transport hearts from the donor hospital to the recipient hospital, DCD donors can now fulfil their donation wishes and more recipients are receiving their transplants. The success of the technology is evident:

• More than 420 DCD hearts have been transplanted since 2015
• In 2024/25 there were 40% more heart transplants made possible as a direct result of the DCD heart perfusion technology
• Based on activity to 15 Dec we are on track to undertake more than 90 DCD heart transplants in 2025/26, a 58% increase on DCD hearts transplanted in 2024/25

The substantive funding award will enable us to continue to stabilise the DCD heart retrieval service and will support life-saving DCD heart retrievals into the future.

Message from Dr Waqas Akhtar, Consultant at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust:-

NHS Blood and Transplant donor echocardiography standard to improve organ utilisation in heart transplantation.

Focused echocardiography performed by intensive care staff plays a pivotal role in donor-heart assessment across the UK, with ICU clinicians undertaking around half of all scans and providing the crucial first evaluation of the heart.

This early, bedside imaging often determines whether a donor heart progresses to retrieval, making the quality and consistency of ICU-led studies essential for improving donor-heart utilisation. A recent national review showed that variation in echo datasets can affect transplant decision-making, reinforcing the need for structured support for the clinicians who deliver most of these assessments.

To address this, a new national focused donor-heart echocardiography proforma has been introduced, and the accompanying website provides comprehensive guidance, educational resources and training videos to help teams acquire the minimum dataset reliably and confidently, ensuring ICU specialists are fully supported in this vital part of the donation pathway. You can read more on the publication listed on the National Library of Medicine website.

End of year message from the Sustainability and Certainty in Organ Retrieval (SCORE) Team

You can read the SCORE team's most recent update newsletter on the team's webpage. 

Organ Donation Marketing: our 2025 unwrapped!

As the end of 2025 approaches, we've been reflecting on the year from an organ donation marketing perspective.

Our focus throughout the year has been on encouraging people to confirm their organ donation decision because we know this has a clear impact on consent rates for donation, with families much more likely to support donation if they know their loved one was a registered organ donor. The transplant waiting list is as high as it has ever been, so we've developed new insight-driven messaging this year, highlighting the commonly accepted sentiment that most of us would accept an organ if we needed one.

This, aligned with the stark message that someone will die today waiting for a transplant, was designed to inspire action - especially amongst the 50 to 69-year-old audience who we targeted through advertising and storytelling. We know many people in this age range support donation, though they haven't yet registered. Our 'Dear Layla' video was designed specifically for this audience. You can watch it here.

Dear Layla launched in September, for Organ Donation Week, and was a key part of our drive to share the life-limiting impact of waiting for a transplant. Throughout Organ Donation Week we saw a spike in visits to our website, with people spending longer reading our content. There was a marked increase in opt-in registrations via the website during this time too.

One person waiting for a transplant is Sam Vanderpump, known to many through the reality TV show Made in Chelsea. He needs a liver transplant and worked with us in several ways to promote registrations, appearing on the hugely successful We Need to Talk podcast, on ITV's This Morning show and in a video for our channels, where he chatted with Anthony Clarkson. Again, this coverage led to a notable increase in opt-in registrations as Sam helped us to reach different audiences.

In November the Ethnic Differences in Organ Donation and Transplantation report was published, highlighting that organ donations among people from ethnic minority backgrounds increased last year, but the number of people from these communities' receiving transplants fell slightly. You can read a media release featuring Amrit and Eliza, whose experiences were featured, on our Organ Donation website.

We'll be back in the next bulletin with a look at what we'll be working on in 2026 but for now, as the year draws to an end, we have one thing on our Christmas wish list. If you haven't already confirmed your organ donation decision, please do so today through our website or via the NHS App.

2 minutes now can save up to 9 lives. It's the best thing you'll do today!

Thank you.