HONOLULU – The Queen’s Health System recently celebrated a milestone: 10 years of lives being saved through organ transplantation at The Queen’s Medical Center (Queen’s).
Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi presented a proclamation in honor of the 10th anniversary during an event in the Harkness Courtyard on the Queen’s campus on November 15. Transplant recipients, living donors, donor families, government officials, community partners and other guests were invited.
During the past decade, Queen’s caregivers have performed more than 660 liver, kidney, and pancreas transplants, and 66 living donor nephrectomies. The event highlighted the difference that organ and tissue donors have made, and how more donors are needed to continue to save and change lives in our community.
Among the speakers was patient Reyn Kimura, who was interviewed by the news media earlier this year while he was sick in the hospital. He has since undergone a life-saving liver transplant.
In 1969, St. Francis Medical Center, which later became Hawai‘i Medical Center (HMC), established the first organ transplantation program in Hawai‘i. In 2011, HMC announced the closure of the hospital.
Queen’s opened its transplant center in 2012 to ensure Hawai‘i would continue to have an active transplantation program. The Queen’s Transplant Center remains the only such facility in the state and the Pacific Basin.
Currently, about 320 people are on the transplant waiting list in Hawai‘i.
