A PSYCHOLOGIST from Teesside is one of more than 500 people in the UK to donate a kidney to a stranger as a living donor.

In the ten years since the law changed to allow strangers to donate a healthy kidney, there have been 504 people come forward to give a healthy kidney to a complete stranger.

Among these generous donors is Dr Gill Owens from Yarm, near Stockton, who gave a kidney in 2015 at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital.

She said: “There are more than 5,000 people in the UK waiting for a kidney and around 300 people die each year in need of one.

“Donating a kidney to one of them was an absolute privilege.”

Before 2006, there were no guidelines around being a live kidney donor for a stranger, but a new law was drafted to allow it to happen. Before that live kidney donation had been around since the 1960s, but only for friends and family of patients.

A spokeswoman for the charity Give a Kidney said many people saw it as an extension of being a blood donor.

Any healthy adult can be assessed as a living donor, and this donation is the best treatment option for most patients with kidney diseases.

The volunteer donor goes through a thorough assessment over several months to ensure they are fit and healthy.

If approved, they are matched a patient from the transplant waiting list or they can also enter into a sharing scheme which enables one non-directed donor to potentially ‘trigger’ up to three transplants.

Bob Wiggins Chair of charity Give a Kidney which raises awareness of non-directed kidney donation said:

“We’re encouraging everyone to consider if you could share your spare.

“Many people still don’t know that any healthy adult can volunteer as a living donor. As a result of people like Gill, many hundreds of lives have been changed for the better.

“Not only that, but together this group has already saved the NHS tens of millions of pounds over the cost of keeping the recipients of their kidneys on dialysis treatment.”

Lisa Burnapp, Lead Nurse for Living Donation at NHS Blood and Transplant said: “Nearly three hundred people died waiting for a kidney transplant last year.

“Living donation is highly successful, and hundreds of people have had their lives saved and transformed in reaching this milestone over the past decade, thanks to the incredible generosity of these donors.

“Through donor chains, up to three people can benefit from a single donation because it can trigger a chain of transplants. The more people who are willing to consider donating in this way, the more kidneys there are available to help everyone”

Living kidney donation has been taking place in the UK since the 1960s. To register or find out more, visit www.giveakidney.org