Bittersweet organ donation saves 5 after Beersheba youth killed in birthday crash

Maor Alonso was killed in the tragic accident on his 18th birthday.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Updated: JUNE 6, 2016 00:46
Maor Alonso (photo credit: Courtesy)
Maor Alonso
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The lives of five people have been saved, thanks to the family of an 18-year-old resident of Beersheba who was killed in a road accident on the eve of Lag Ba’Omer last week.
After the accident, Maor Alonso was taken to Soroka-University Medical Center in critical condition. He died a few days later on his 18th birthday.
When the hospital’s organ transplant coordinator asked his parents and brother to donate his organs, they consented.
His heart was transplanted at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer into a 70-year-old man who received a temporary artificial heart. The recipient is now recovering from the transplant surgery in the cardiac intensive care unit.
His lungs were given to a 65-year-old woman and most of his liver to a 60-year-old man at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva.
A lobe of his liver and a kidney were transplanted into a nine-year-old girl at Schneider Children’s Medical Center, also in Petah Tikva.
The other kidney went to a 34-year-old woman at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.
The Israeli National Transplant Center said on Sunday that in recent months there has been an increase in the number of families of deceased who have agreed to donate organs.
In addition, it has received many scores of requests from prospective altruistic, live-kidney donors.