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Brooklyn Wangmann was only four years old when she died on an operating table. When medical staff asked her parents about organ donation they did not think twice.
Brooklyn gave another child her liver in a direct transplant at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead three years go. “We just felt that Brooklyn was the type of little girl who would want to help someone, and for us, it was a way for a part of her to live on,” her mother Rebecca Wangmann told The Sun-Herald’s Rachel Rasker.
Grieving and altruism meet in organ donation. Families can find that the altruistic choice to donate a loved one’s organs helps shape meaning from their sudden loss. Although widely supported, Australia is facing a critical gap between public endorsement for organ donation and actual registration rates.
Brooklyn’s story speaks to how rare paediatric donation is in Australia. Last year, just nine children nationwide became organ donors. It takes a lot for a family to say yes at such a tragic and personal moment – between 2021 and 2025, the average consent rate for donation in children under 16 was 46 per cent, compared to 55 per cent over 16.
But her story also highlights the gulf between thought and action of many Australians considering how they might help.
Most Australians support organ donation. Since the national DonateLife program began in 2009, more than 20,000 people have had life-saving transplants thanks to more than 7500 deceased organ donors and their families, who agreed to donation.
But it is not enough. Australia simply doesn’t have enough donors. For instance, there are currently 136 people on Australia’s liver transplant waitlist. In the last five years, 72 Australians died while on that waitlist.
Actual donation rates have remained relatively steady both in NSW and nationally. A decade ago, there were 127 actual donations in NSW, compared to 160 last year. Across Australia, there were 435 donations in 2015, and 557 last year.
But the Australian Organ Donor Register has recorded a significant decline in the number of people in NSW registered as donors over the past five years. During the COVID pandemic, registration lifted quickly and a spike in 2021 saw 110,000 new registrations. That had fallen to 34,000 registered last year.
Co-State Medical Director DonateLife NSW Dr Michael O’Leary attributed the pandemic-era increase to people having the immediacy of the organ donor sign-up button adjacent to their COVID vaccine certificates on the Medicare app. Now he thinks lethargy has set in. “They think about it once and then forget about it, and never actually get around to it. But if you put the opportunity in front of them, more will actually sign up,” he said.
Donor rates in Sydney tend to be lowest in areas of mixed ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Authorities should strive harder to ensure information is targeted at these communities in their own languages.
Organ donations save and transform lives, and the persistent gap between organ demand and supply calls for innovative strategies.
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