At age 11, doctors told Lomond Chu Lok-man he had no more than two months to live if he didn't get a liver transplant. Born with congenital bile duct obstruction that developed into liver cirrhosis, he had spent his childhood vomiting and passing blood, and making trips to the doctor and hospital.
With time running out, he was given a second chance at life through a liver donated by the family of someone who died. The precious gift turned Chu's life around - he's now a scholarship student at Baptist University and a track athlete who's represented Hong Kong at the World Transplant Games.
Heartwarming stories like Chu's are becoming more common in the city as organ donation is gradually being accepted.
At the end of last year, there were more than 90,000 registered donors in the Centralised Organ Donation Register, up from about 65,000 at the end of 2010.
However, this still represents just 1 per cent of the population, despite 70 per cent of respondents to a phone survey in 2007 by the Health Department saying they were willing to donate their organs.
To help boost donor numbers on the three-year-old register, the Health Department recently inaugurated the Garden of Life, a 300-square-metre area near the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre in Kowloon Park. Not only will the garden be used as an educational site on organ donation and a tribute to donors, it also will be a venue for publicity activities aimed at getting people to sign up for the register.
