Tissue donations are as valuable to medical patients as the more common donations of organs.
Organs include the heart, kidneys and liver, among other organs, but tissue donation covers skin, heart valves and bone.
A tissue donor has the ability to help a burn victim or give a star athlete a chance to return to their sport after a major injury like tearing of an ACL.
Across the nation there is a massive demand for skin as well as sports-related orthopedic tissue.
The Life Gift West offices cover 70 West Texas counties, more than 1 million people, for organ and tissue donation.
"The most important thing that you can say to anybody is to just imagine yourself in a situation where you are needing an organ or a tissue or something that is going to allow you to walk again," says Jimmie Staffs, a tissue donation specialist. "Something that may allow you to the freedom to do things maybe in your life that you haven't been able to do in a while."
Right now more than 108,000 people are waiting for a life-saving transplant in the United States; 10,000 are in Texas.
If you're considering becoming a donor you can sign up on Life Gift's
Web site.
