MADISON – Governor Jim Doyle and First Lady Jessica Doyle announced this week the state’s new Organ Donor Registry. The web-based registry will make it even easier for Wisconsin residents to list themselves as a donor through a secure online database.

“Our ongoing efforts to improve Wisconsin’s nation-leading organ donation rates are having a dramatic life-saving effect,” Governor Doyle said. “The new Donor Registry will raise awareness for the critical need for organ donation and ensure even more Wisconsin residents can give the gift of life.”

“This is an enormous step toward helping the 1,500 people in this state now on the national waiting list for a transplant,” First Lady Doyle said. “ Wisconsin people are already among the most generous organ donors in the nation. This Registry will allow us to do even more to save or improve the lives of our families, friends and neighbors.”

The new online Donor Registry will allow Wisconsin citizens to legally authorize organ, tissue and eye donation with a click of a button. This simple but highly effective tool is expected to help save or enhance thousands of lives over the next decade.

“We’re encouraging everyone who wants to be an organ, tissue and eye donor to register using the online Registry,” said Martha Mallon, President of Donate Life Wisconsin and Organ & Tissue Donor Promotion Director for the state Department of Health Services.

The online Registry will make it easier and more effi cient for Wisconsin residents to sign up and support donation. Anyone over the age of 15 ½ years with a driver’s license or state ID can grant legal authorization to donate their organs, tissue and corneas upon their death.

The Registry is secure and confidential and people can remove their names at any time. All interested residents, including those who already have an orange dot on their drivers’ license, should register on the website. Donation professionals will be able to access a person’s donation decision, share that information with the donor’s family, and work with them to honor that choice.

For more than 20 years, Wisconsin residents have been able to choose to be recorded as potential donors for the purposes of transplantation, therapy, research and education when they received or renewed their drivers’ licenses. Beginning today, however, a person who applies for or renews their license and decides to register as a donor is now legally authorizing organ, tissue and eye donation upon death.

To learn more about organ, tissue and eye donation, to register as a donor, and to learn more about the Transplant Games being hosted in Madison in July 2010, please visit: www.YesIWillWisconsin.com.

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