The family of a 33-year-old American tourist who suffered serious injuries during a hiking accident a week ago on Crete acquiesced to organ donation on Sunday after the woman was declared brain dead.
The accident occurred on Monday, Dec. 23, in a rugged region near the Preveli Monastery, on Crete’s remote southern coast. A major rescue effort commenced at the time to retrieve the severely injured hiker from a cliffside, after she had slipped and fell over the edge. The woman was also pregnant at the time and suffered a miscarriage due to the fall and serious head and chest injuries.
According to reports, the woman was a declared organ donor in her native US state, something that swayed her close relatives, who had arrived from America to Greece, to make the painful decision to take her off life-support at a Hania hospital’s ICU.
A team of medical specialists travelled from the Laiko Hospital in Athens to harvest the woman’s kidneys and liver, while her corneas were donated to another hospital on Crete.
In an announcement, the hospital’s administration issued the following:
“The administration of the General Hospital of Chania (Hania) expresses its deep and sincere condolences to the family of the donor and bows before this greatness of the soul and humanity. The idea of organ and tissue donation is the highest form of volunteerism and altruism, as well as a primary prerequisite for the realization of the medical miracle of organ transplantation.”
