Website glitch a setback, organ donor registration advocate says

Morning North5:12Organ donor website glitch worrisome to woman on transplant list

The Health Minister says Service Ontario's be-a-donor website is fixed now, but Marie Beaucage of North Bay, who is waiting for a kidney, feels uneasy about the glitch. We spoke to her about her concerns.

A woman in North Bay waiting for a kidney is wondering about the security of the website where organ donors register after learning that a section of it was affected by a glitch.

Officials report the problem on Service Ontario's Be-a-Donor website did not prevent any transplant operations, and only affected an area of the website where people recorded they did not want to donate their organs.

But for Mary Beaucage, who has been waiting for a kidney for 1.5 years the same period of time the organ donor website glitch went undetected its a worrisome revelation.

She said she has a sense of unease about "the whole thing you wonder how secure their system is.

The province is sending out letters to the 60,000 people affected by the glitch, asking them to register again.

This technical problem is seen as a setback for Sudbury's Richard St. Amour, who recruits organ donors.

This is just not a glitch here, he said. We take little baby steps forward and now we take a big big leap backwards.

St. Amour said he doubts that all 60,000 people will take the time to re-register, and that will reduce the overall number of donors.

He wants to know why it took so long to find the problem.

What are they doing? How can something like this ever happen? In this day and age with our technology, and not be noticed, [for] 18 months, he said.