A Redcar woman who saved her sister's life by donating a kidney has launched a national campaign to prevent anyone else ever having to do the same.

Jane Cooper, 50, is asking every council in Britain to help by sending out organ donor forms with the electoral registration forms to every home in Britain.

She believes the campaign could save thousands of lives and wants to prevent anybody going through the agonies she and her sister Kay MacLachlan have undergone.

Speaking from her mother's home at Coatham Road in Redcar, Mrs Cooper told how she saw her sister gradually dying in front of her eyes. "She had been so ill she was about to die and of course I had immediately offered to help," she said.

Mrs MacLachlan, 49, told how the two year wait for a donor had affected her son Jamie who was just eight at the time.

She said: "My son was marvellous. Especially before I was diagnosed I was so ill and so poisoned I didn't know what I was saying. I would try and say something nice to him and something horrible would come out. Something like that damages everyone around you."

Jamie, who is now 11, remembered the pain his mother was in and added his voice to the call for people to become donors. He said: "It was a bad time. What aunty Jane and mum are doing will stop any other people from having to go through what she went through."

Now 16 months after the operation Kay is still weak but is able to walk and is joining her life-saving sister to help others.

Already they have got the support of the family of Stockton boy Ben Hazell, 14, who survived a heart transplant and Darlington's mayor Bill Dixon who wants the council to send 4,500 donor registration forms to employees.

Ben is already backing The Northern Echo's drive to sign up at least 2000 donors in the year 2000 as part of its A Chance to Live health campaign.