Hannah Swift of Helmsley backs Lifesavers campaign

Only an emergency heart transplant operation could save her, but most people wait months to find a matching donor.

Miraculously, when doctors in Leeds phoned the heart transplant centre to put Hannah on the waiting list, they were told a heart had just become available that was the perfect match for her. “When they got off the phone they told my parents the good news is we’ve got a heart, but the bad news is it’s in Newcastle,” said Hannah, 23, who grew up in Helmsley. “They didn’t think I would live long enough to get there.

“There wasn’t room in the ambulance for my parents, so they had to follow in the car, and because they didn’t have a mobile phone back then my mum said before they set off, ‘if she dies in the ambulance on the way up, turn the lights off and we will know’.”

But the blue flashing lights stayed on all the way and Hannah arrived at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle in time for the operation that would save her life.

She was given her heart by a 13-year-old Newcastle girl who was killed in a road accident.

The girl had specifically told her family that she wanted to donate her organs in the event of her death, and she saved four lives by giving away her heart, liver and two kidneys. “I owe my life to her,” said Hannah, who is now backing our Lifesavers campaign, which aims to encourage an extra 20,000 people across York and North and East Yorkshire to join the Organ Donor Register by the end of this year.

“I was incredibly lucky,” she said. “But there are still people who don't get the transplant they need in time and I think more people need to be aware of it. There’s a saying, don’t take your organs to heaven because heaven knows we need them here, and I think that sums it up quite well.”

• More than 5,000 people signed up to save a life in the first 100 days of our campaign, which we launched in December following the death of Miss York finalist Emma Young, 22, who died while awaiting a double-lung transplant.