Transplant services in Yorkshire are in crisis in the wake of the Alder Hey Children's Hospital scandal.

Organs have been taken from only two donors in the whole of the region in the last month.

Normally, transplant teams could have hoped to have organs from five donors to help the 420 kidney patients, 25 liver patients and several heart patients waiting for potentially life-saving transplants.

Regional transplant bosses fear the fall in donations could be due to a combination of distrust in the medical profession following Alder Hey and confusion about what consent to donation involves.

Yorkshire transplant co-ordinator Julie Jeffrey, who is based at St James's Hospital in Leeds, said she believed the picture was the same across the country.

"Unless it picks up, there will be people who die on the waiting list," she said.

One York man whose son's transplanted organs helped save three people today pleaded with bereaved families not to let Alder Hey stop them consenting to donation of their loved one's organs.

Philip Torrance, 61, of Tang Hall Lane, whose son Grahame, 19, died after a motorcycle accident nearly ten years ago, said he drew real comfort from the thought his son had not died entirely in vain.

Mr Torrance stressed organ donation for transplant was very different from what had happened at Alder Hey.

"All organs taken for transplanting are used immediately to save lives," he said. "Organs for transplanting are never taken unless there are patients awaiting receipt of those organs."

Sue Docwra, 36, from Clifton, who had both kidneys removed in 1994 after developing multiple cysts, added her own plea today for families confused in the wake of Alder Hey not to withhold the 'gift of life'.

Sue, who is on dialysis three times a week, has been waiting for a transplant for six years.

She said: "I know it is the last thing you want to think of. But if at that painful time you think you could be helping somebody to live a better life, or even save a life, that is a wonderful thing to do.

"It is the ultimate gift of life."

Unless next of kin give their consent to donation, doctors cannot remove organs for transplant following death even from someone who was a registered donor.

Transplant co-ordinators in Yorkshire would normally hope to have 60 organs donated in a year. There was already a fall in donations last year, with only 38 organs donated in the whole of the region. Transplant teams fear Alder Hey will push that figure even lower.

UK Transplant, the national agency co-ordinating organ transplants for the whole country, says figures for the number of organs donated across the country are not yet available for the last month.

But more than 5,000 people in the UK are waiting for an organ transplant that could dramatically improve or even save their life, it says - and many die each year.

Updated: 12:13 Monday, February 12, 2001