Transplant patient's Christmas plea: talk to your family about organ donation

With hundreds waiting for heart transplants, experts and patients urge public to register as organ donors - and make their wishes clear to family members

Families are being urged to talk about becoming an organ donor in the hope that more people on the waiting list for a heart transplant will be given the chance of life.

Since last Christmas Day, 31 people have died on the heart transplant waiting list, according to NHS Blood and Transplant. To try to tackle the shortage of organs, the government has recently announced a consultation into an "opt-out" scheme. Everybody would be assumed to be willing to donate their organs unless they had signed up to a register to say no.