Chiefs baseball celebrates Donate Life Night Friday
Upstate Univeristy Hospital is partnering with the Syracuse Chiefs to educate the community on the value of organ, tissue, and eye donation and to register people as donors. Upstate is one of seven local and regional organizations that will attend Donate Life Night at 7 p.m. Friday, July 13 as the Chiefs take on the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees at Alliance Bank Stadium in Syracuse. Fireworks follow the game.Proceeds from ticket sales will help pay for a team of Finger Lakes-area transplant recipients' participation at the National Transport Games July 28 to 31 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Purchase tickets for $5 each by calling Upstate's Patricia King RN at 464-6002 or through other sponsors.
The other organizations include the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network, the Central New York Eye and Tissue Bank, the Finger Lakes Eye and Tissue Bank, the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, St. Joseph‘s Hospital Health Center, and Crouse Hospital.
“For the more than 114,000 patients nationwide, including some 10,000 New York State residents, awaiting life-saving organ transplants and thousands more needing life-enhancing tissue and eye transplants, donations have to not only continue but also increase to meet this demand for organs, tissue, and eyes,” said Amy Edwards, Community Education Coordinator at Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network and spokesperson for the collaboration.
She said New York has the third highest number of patients awaiting an organ transplant and has the third lowest rate of donation among all states, with a registration rate of just 18 percent among those eligible to enroll. Central New York's registration rate is only slightly higher, at 24 percent. This event is tied into Donate Life America and its goal of registering 20 million donors this year.
