The first day of the National Ploughing Championships 2019 marks the 10th anniversary of a hugely significant organ donor awareness event. The 17th September 2009, ten years ago, was the day when Emmy Award winning screenwriter Frank Deasy passed away from liver cancer. An radio interview just days before with his old friend RTE broadcaster Joe Duffy on Liveline about his plight and what he described as being like ‘on death row’ while waiting for a liver transplant spurred a huge public response and surge in organ donor card requests to the Irish Kidney Association. Sadly Frank passed away in the same week whilst undergoing a liver transplant operation. Frank’s remarkable legacy remains unprecedented, generating a massive public response with over 15,000 individual requests for organ donor cards in just one week. A couple years after Frank’s passing, Joe became a national ambassador for organ donor awareness, a role which he held for three years, and he continues to advocate for organ donation and highlighting the plight of people with organ failure.
The Irish Kidney Association is proud of its new Exhibition Trailer which is making its first reveal at the 2019 National Ploughing Championships in Ballintrane, Carlow where it is now in situ (photos attached) at Stand no. 607, Row 26. The National Ploughing Championships offer an important platform for the Irish Kidney Association to promote the work it does as a registered charity organisation which advocates for dialysis and transplant patients and their families as well as being charged with the promotion and distribution of organ donor cards in Ireland. The Ploughing Championships provide a huge organ donor awareness opportunity and the Irish Kidney Association team will be distributing organ donor cards and providing information to the public from its new Exhibition Trailer on the subject of organ donation over the three days. For organ donor cards Freetext DONOR to 50050.
We wish the Championships organisers another hugely successful event.