Individuals from around the world brought together with the common thread of enhancing life with tissue donation.
That motto took center stage when the Northwest Tissue Services was invited to participate in “Technical Cooperation Between Developing Countries,” a workshop on public and professional awareness and promotional literature held in Montevideo, Uruguay, from June 4-8, 2001.

The Tissue Services’s hospital services supervisor, Candy Wells (seated second from right), joined hosts and other participants at the workshop in Uruguay.

The workshop was a follow-up to a general tissue banking training program conducted in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a year earlier and attended by the directors of tissue programs from countries of South and Central America. Dr. D. Michael Strong from the Tissue Services program provided expert
training for that effort.

In Uruguay, a total of 15 regional and international experts participated in the workshop. Candy Wells represented the Tissue Services and introduced its strategic approaches to public and professional education used here in the Northwest. She took along a “73-pound suitcase” full of promotional materials to share with meeting participants from around the world. They, in turn, took Tissue Services videos, brochures, and educational and promotional materials to share in their own countries.

The workshop was initiated by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) to prepare public and professional awareness literature and to develop a strategy that would enable tissue banks throughout the world to present their mission to their public, professional health care workers and clinical users.

The workshop’s objectives, then, were to write a formal report and to draft a handbook detailing a communication and implementation strategy for public and professional awareness for all participant countries in the IAEA Radiation and Tissue Banking Program.

Jorge Morales Pedraza, inter-regional project manager participated in the workshop as IAEA representative. Professor Glyn Phillips, technical adviser to the IAEA Radiation and Tissue Banking Program was also present. Morales and Phillips have been instrumental in assisting developing countries in establishing programs to provide the option of tissue donation and transplantation to their communities. Because of their dedication and years of hard work, and the support of the IAEA, countless individuals around the world have benefited from tissue donation.

During the workshop participants gave presentations about their regional experiences. Experts from United States, Latin America, Asia, Africa, United Kingdom, and Australia concluded that the benefits of tissue transplantation are now spread unevenly across the participating countries. A lack of public and professional education is the main reason for this disparity.

Consequently, collaborative efforts will continue to be instrumental in ensuring successful donation programs and professional education and public awareness worldwide. The handbook developed in Uruguay will be reviewed and adopted in a second workshop to be held in Brazil in August 2002.

Collaboration also continues to develop educational materials for tissue bank professionals that will be provided through internet-based distance learning programs, available throughout the world.