Screen­ing donor organs for infec­tious dis­eases and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty in just a few hours can be the dif­fer­ence between life and death for patients await­ing transplant.

With a short­age of organs, more donors deemed as hav­ing an ‘increased risk’ of undi­ag­nosed infec­tions from drug use, incar­cer­a­tion or recent tat­toos, are being accept­ed fol­low­ing devel­op­ment of new screen­ing meth­ods for dead­ly pathogens.

The NSW Organ and Tis­sue Dona­tion Ser­vice (OTDS) and the TGA-licensed NSW Health Pathol­o­gy Nucle­ic Acid Test­ing (NSWHP NAT) Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Prince of Wales Hos­pi­tal are a team of ded­i­cat­ed clin­i­cal pathol­o­gists, lab­o­ra­to­ry sci­en­tists and dona­tion spe­cial­ists work­ing a 24/7 ros­ter to respond when­ev­er a donor organ becomes avail­able, deliv­er­ing results with­in a crit­i­cal 8‑hour timeframe.