A LEADING clergyman whose life was saved by a liver transplant nearly ten years ago is making a plea for people to carry organ donor cards.

Ripon Cathedral's Dean John Metheun is supporting a donor card bus touring the Ripon and Leeds Diocese shortly. The Dean will be in Harrogate on July 25 to give his personal backing to the venture.

The 53-year-old Dean, who is recovering from a hip replacement operation, underwent a liver transplant in Birmingham in 1992 after being given contaminated blood in a transfusion.

He was being operated on to remove wisdom teeth and later developed Hepatitis C.

For several years the disease attacked his liver and by the time it was removed time was running out.

If he had not had the transplant, he would have died.

Dean Metheun said: "I would not be alive today if it wasn't for the fact of a liver being donated to me by the family of someone who had just died.

"There has been a certain amount of negative publicity towards the National Health Service lately when we have heard of organs being removed from patients, particularly children, after death without permission or indeed the knowledge of parents and relatives.

"This should not put us off, however, from understanding that the surgical techniques now exist to enable people with terminal illnesses to live their natural span as a result of organ donations and transplants."