You can decide that you want to have your organs donated when you die, but if your family doesn’t want it, it will not happen.

April was Organ and Tissue Donation awareness month and it is important to let your family know your wishes so that they can carry them out when you die. Bermuda law stipulates that the final decision is with the surviving next of kin and this supercedes even an indication on your driver’s licence of your personal wish.

Coordinator in the Intensive Care unit of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, Brad Klenig, said such conflicts do arise. “We had an incident just before Christmas where the family said ‘yes, yes we want to donate’,” he said. “We heard from the brother, sister and sister-in-law. The brother and sister were acting as next of kin and it wasn’t until the reps from New England came down that we even discovered there was a wife.

She did not speak any English and was not in Bermuda at the time of her husband’s death. But ultimately by Bermuda law she is the next of kin and she said no.”

Mr. Klenig said the painful conversations were held via translators over the phone.

Mr. Klenig, an Australian, said in his country and in the UK the law assumes that you want to donate your organs unless you have indicated otherwise. In these countries people have their driver’s licence indicate that they do not want to donate.

There are no plans to change the legislation in Bermuda to mirror those in the UK and Australia.