A WOMAN who saved her sister's life by donating a kidney has launched a campaign to get the donor message to every person in the country.

Jane Cooper, 50, is asking every council in Britain to send out organ donor forms with the electoral registration forms sent to all householders.

She believes the campaign could save thousands of lives and wants to prevent others suffering the agonies she and her sister, Kay MacLachlan, have suffered.

Speaking from her mother's home at Coatham Road, Redcar, Mrs Cooper told last night how she saw her sister dying before her eyes.

She said: "She had been so ill and she was about to die. I immediately offered to help.

"At one stage I had to hire a private ambulance to get her home to our mother's. The ambulance driver asked if she was coming home to die."

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

She said: "My son was marvellous, especially before I was diagnosed, when 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."

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

Already they have the support of the family of Stockton boy Ben Hazell, 14, who survived a heart transplant, and Darlington's mayor Bill Dixon, who wants Darlington Borough Council to adopt the scheme to supplement the 4,500 donor registration forms it plans to send to employees.

Ben is backing The Northern Echo's Save a Life campaign to sign up at least 2,000 donors in the year 2000, after the nation was touched by the plight of North Yorkshire girl Sally Slater, whose life was saved after her parents appealed for a heart to be donated.

Ben's life was saved by a heart from a three-year-old girl.

Yesterday, his mother, Ruth Hazell, said she hoped her own council at Stockton would take on the idea.

She said: "If the form comes through the door, it will be so much easier for people. I think, given the chance, people would choose to help people like my son."

Elsewhere in Britain, Taunton Deane Borough Council, in Somerset, has sent out 44,000 donor card forms with electoral registration forms. About 11,500 people agreed to become donor card carriers.

In a letter to Mrs Cooper, Home Secretary Jack Straw expressed an interest, but said any such scheme should not be allowed to confuse electors.

The Local Government Association, British Medical Association, and the British Organ Donor Society have also lent their support. A spokesman for the Department of Health said the department took the issue of donor registration very seriously, but would need more time to examine the idea.

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