Mother needing transplant cannot take dead daughter’s kidney

Doctors tell mother needing transplant she cannot take dead daughter’s
kidney, despite girl’s deathbed plea

When Rachel Leake developed complications from diabetes, her selfless
daughter tried to donate one of her kidneys to save her.

But 21-year-old Laura Ashworth died suddenly before the arrangements
could be completed – and her mother has now been told the organs will go
to strangers instead.

Family and friends, who all knew of Laura’s desire to be a live donor,
tried to get the authorities to change the decision.

They even enlisted the help of local MP Gerry Sutcliffe to lobby health
ministers on Mrs Leake’s behalf, but to no avail.

Laura died after suffering massive brain damage when she stopped
breathing because of a suspected asthma attack.

One of Laura’s kidneys went to a man in Sheffield and the second to a
man in London. Her liver was given to a 15-year-old girl.

“I am angry, really angry,” said Mrs Leake, who is 39. “I am not finding
comfort at the moment in the fact that she helped three people.

“All I wanted to do was carry out her wishes. She would have been so
upset that she was able to help other people and not her own mum.

“Even the transplant co-ordinator was crying her eyes out, she really
tried to get them to change their minds but her bosses would not budge.”

But as Mrs Leake, of Bradford, West Yorkshire, prepared to pay her last
respects to her only child, a transplant co-ordinator broke the
bombshell news that Laura’s kidneys would go to strangers.

Mrs Leake, now the main carer for Laura’s two-and-a-half-year-old
daughter Macie, is on the transplant list and has to undergo dialysis
three times a week.

She has suffered from kidney failure for seven years after developing
diabetes while pregnant with Laura. She had a kidney transplant five
years ago, but that organ failed after a year.

Laura, who was on the organ donor register, had told her mum she would
be a living donor but, crucially, this was never formally recorded.

The lifelong asthmatic suffered a coughing fit on the morning of March
31 this year and collapsed on the kitchen floor of the farmhouse she
shared with her daughter, mother and grandfather Jack Ashworth.

Paramedics could not open her airways and she was taken to the intensive
care unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary, but she had suffered brain
damage.

After two days it became clear that Laura, who worked at a vehicle
management company, would not survive.

Mrs Leake said she still did not know why her request to receive her
daughter’s organs was refused.

She said: “Everyone has gone mad and everyone is disgusted. The thing
that hurts the most is how Laura would feel. She would be devastated
that she was not able to help me.

“My sister has now written down her wishes that I get her kidney if
anything was to happen to her. I will not let this go – there could be
another person it could happen to.”

A spokesman for UK Transplant said the final decision in this case was
taken by the Human Tissue Authority.

“They were the ones who in this circumstance were asked if the
daughter’s kidney could go to the mother,” he said. “Their judgement,
under the law, was that it was not allowed to happen.”

No one at the Human Tissue Authority was available for comment.

An inquest into Laura’s death has been opened and adjourned at Bradford
Coroner’s Court.

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