October 3, 2001
Transplant Community Shines In Wake of Sept. 11 Events
The horrifying Sept. 11th terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon temporarily paralyzed air traffic nationwide, prompting the transplant community the look for alternative means of transportation for meetings and organ delivery.
Grounded flights didn't stop many from getting the job done. In Iowa, employees and volunteers with Iowa Donor Network, including long-term liver recipient Tom Jorgensen, drove 20 hours from Iowa City to deliver donated skin and heart valves to LifeNet Transplant Services in Virginia Beach, Va.
Midwest Transplant Network chartered a plane to coordinate at least two organ placements as soon as charter flights were allowed to continue on Sept. 12. Their flight was granted a "lifeguard" status by the Federal Aviation Administration.
In Tennessee, the FAA approved a request by Tennessee Donor Services for special military transport of a liver needed by a 6-month-old girl. The Tennessee Air National Guard delivered the ice-packed cooler in a two-hour trip to Houston. The recipient was stitched up four hours after the liver arrived and is doing well now.
LifeCenter Northwest managed to get a heart transplanted into the intended recipient in Seattle despite a forced landing of their charter flight from the donor hospital in Alaska. A Navy F-16 fighter and a Canadian military jet accompanied the plane to Bellingham, about 80 miles short of its destination. A helicopter was used to complete the trip. The military was uninformed of the flight due to miscommunication.
One of the greatest difficulties was the tighter security measures which required x-raying all packages, including coolers containing organs. The process does not harm the organs, but can cost valuable time at the airport.
Two groups from UNOS at the O'Hare Hilton in Chicago found their meetings canceled and their return flights grounded. With air transportation grounded indefinitely, any available option was considered to return home.
Seven UNOS employees attending the Data Working Group and the OPO Committee meetings were able to grab a van after a three-hour wait for a rental vehicle. The ride began at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon. The trip ended about 900 miles later at 6 p.m. the following day.
Not everyone was so lucky. Dr. Sue McDiarmid of UCLA Medical Center was also attending the Data Working Group meeting. She was able to rent a car, but had to drive 2,300 miles home, arriving home at 1 a.m. Friday September 14.
The nationwide grounding of flights and concerns over air travel immediately cancelled many transplant meetings. Regional meetings in UNOS Regions 3, 5, 10 and 11 were cancelled, as was the American Society of Minority Health and Transplant Professionals (ASMHTP) meeting.
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