2024 has been a historic year for the Nevada Donor Network Birth Tissue Program. The Birth Tissue Program launched in 2019, coordinating the first placenta donation on August 8, 2019. We kicked off this year with a reimagined approach, renewed focus and a larger, dedicated team to provide the opportunity for placenta donation to our community. After repeated record-breaking months, the Birth Tissue Services team is thrilled to announce that before the end of September 2024 the year-to-date birth tissue acquisitions reached 858, eclipsing the sum of all birth tissue acquisitions since the start of the program in 2019.
We are honored to congratulate our Birth Tissue Services team and extend our gratitude to the heroic donor mothers and donor newborns who played a role in bringing us to this momentous occasion! We are proud to provide our community with this amazing opportunity to help save and heal lives.
In the same breath, we are ecstatic to announce that Nevada Donor Network launched their vaginal birth tissue donation program at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center! Prior to this program beginning, we were only able to work with mothers who were having a cesarean delivery (also known as a c-section). We would like to recognize Brooke, one of our ‘rockstar’ Birth Tissue Clinical Coordinators. On the first day of this program launching, she helped obtain consent for the first three vaginal birth tissue donors while also acquiring birth tissue from four patients who delivered via c-section all in ONE shift with the help of her teammates Cynthia, Denzel and Mali. Giving this option to heroic living donor mothers and newborns has been a dream for quite some time and we are beyond proud to see it become a reality!
By the end of September, our Birth Tissue Services team continued to make program history by exceeding our annual birth tissue donation goal! The Team acquired the 985th placenta of the year (9/27/24), marking the day they met their entire goal for 2024. We are excited about what the future holds for the Nevada Donor Network Birth Tissue Program!
You can learn more about birth tissue and how this type of living donation can impact lives here!