Facebook urges members to add organ donor status

Menlo Park, CA, United States (AHN) – Facebook announced Tuesday morning a plan to encourage its millions of members to start advertising their donor status on their pages, alongside their birth dates and schools, a move that the social media giant hopes will urge more people to add their names to the list of registered organ donors.

Experts in the field of organ donation say that people declaring on Facebook that they are potential organ donors could prompt others to sign up—kind of like peer pressure.

Nearly 7,000 people in the United States die every year while waiting for an organ transplant. Facebook’s aim is to lower that number with its huge network of 161 million members in the U.S.

The status will appear with other biographical information in a section called Health and Wellness, which includes updates such as whether a person has recently lost weight or suffered a broken bone.

Also featured will be links to state online donor registries, where people can change their donor status. They can still do it the traditional way–by visiting the local motor vehicle department.

Facebook is also implementing the change in the United Kingdom, where it has some 30 million members.

Plans are to add other countries in the coming months. Globally, Facebook boasts about 900 million members

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