Joint effort to raise organ donation awareness, encourage our community to register as donors, and celebrate the generosity of those who have given the gift of life

BUFFALO, NY—ECMC’s Regional Center of Excellence for Transplantation & Kidney Care is a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to comprehensive patient care.  ConnectLife is Western New York’s only organ, eye, tissue and community blood center.  Together, ConnectLife and ECMC are again teaming up during Donate Life Month in April to stress the importance of, and need for, organ, eye, tissue, and blood donations.  ECMC and ConnectLife continue to collaborate and concentrate on increasing the community’s knowledge and understanding about the need for donation and transplantation. 

ECMC Chief Executive Officer Thomas J. Quatroche, Jr., Ph.D., said, “As we have done for many years, we today celebrate the long-established, successful ECMC-ConnectLife partnership with a focus on helping to improve the health of our community by emphasizing the importance of critically needed organ donations.  More significantly, we highlight organ donors and recipients, along with our talented clinicians, who have contributed to providing the extraordinary gift of life. With 116 kidney transplants performed last year at ECMC, we take pride in our role in this lifesaving process.” 

ConnectLife Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gramlich said, “Donate Life Month is a powerful reminder that each of us has the ability to save and heal lives. One person’s decision to become an organ donor can give hope to the more than 100,000 people waiting for a transplant across the country. At ConnectLife, we are committed to honoring those generous gifts and encouraging our community to have these important conversations and register as donors.”

New York State currently has the third highest need for organ donors in the country and the third lowest percentage of registered donors nationwide.  There are currently over 100,000 people waiting in the U.S., and 10% of these people are from New York.  Out of the approximately 8,200 New Yorkers on the waiting list, over 1,300 have been waiting for lifesaving and improving transplants for more than 5 years.  ECMC currently has 250 individuals on its wait list seeking a kidney transplant. Each year, an estimated 500 men, women, and children in the state die due to the shortage of donors.  

The Regional Center of Excellence for Transplantation and Kidney Care at ECMC is a streamlined, highly specialized transplant program that offers patients world-class care.  The mission of the Center is to provide life-saving kidney and pancreas transplants, vascular access surgical care, hemodialysis for outpatients and inpatients, and treatment and disease management services for patients with all stages of chronic kidney disease.  This concentration of services results in a greater number of procedures performed, a high level of expertise among the medical staff, and the most favorable outcomes for renal patients at all levels of care.  With state-of-the-art technology and procedures for transplant, as well as a growing living donor program, ECMC’s transplantation team is consistently leading the way in these critically important life-saving services.

These life-saving transplants are possible through the support of ConnectLife’s and ECMC’s physician partners, community organizations and the generous people of WNY. 

ConnectLife encourages everyone to commit to becoming a donor by visiting the New York State Donate Life Registry at www.ConnectLife.org/registry and completing a simple enrollment form, or by visiting your local Auto Bureau. 

About Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) Corporation: The ECMC Corporation was established as a New York State Public Benefit Corporation and since 2004 has included an advanced academic medical center with 573 inpatient beds, on- and off-campus health centers, more than 30 outpatient specialty care services and Terrace View, a 390-bed long-term care facility. ECMC is Western New York’s only Level 1 Adult Trauma Center, as well as a regional center for burn care, behavioral health services, transplantation, medical oncology and head & neck cancer care, rehabilitation, and a major teaching facility for the University at Buffalo. Most ECMC physicians, dentists and pharmacists are dedicated faculty members of the university and/or members of a private practice plan.

About ConnectLife: ConnectLife helps people help others. As a federally designated not-for-profit organ procurement organization and community blood bank, we save and enhance lives through organ, eye, tissue, and blood donations. Visit us online at www.ConnectLife.org or Facebook @weconnectlife.