GIVING TIME Richard Todd’s Dying to Live and Organ Donation
At any time, around 1600 Australians are on waiting lists for organ transplants.1 On average, one dies every week.2 Yet, as of 31 August 2018, just 2.3 million Australians aged sixteen and over have been legally accepted as donors – comprising 14.7 and 8.9 per cent of the national female and male populations, respectively – and a total of 6.6 million have registered their interest in donating.3 As of 2015, however, 69 per cent of Australian adult respondents have expressed their willingness to donate, according to a survey commissioned by the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority.4
These statistics came as a shock to filmmaker Richard Todd, who previously made coal-seam-gas documentary Frackman (2015). ‘I started asking, how can this be?’ he tells me.
If there’s such a willingness to donate, why aren’t more people on the list? It feels like one of those problems that’s preventable. There are other things we have no control of, but, if someone’s going to be burying or cremating their organs, when they could be literally changing or saving someone’s life, it feels like such a senseless waste.
In 2015, Todd tracked down six Australians in need of organ or tissue transplants. He spent the following two-and-a-half years recording their experiences.
