140 European lives have been saved because troops donated organs

Troops’ donated organs save European recipients
By Gregg Zoroya
USA TODAY
Posted : Thursday May 3, 2012

After Kelly Hugo flew through a snowstorm to reach the bedside of her mortally wounded son at a U.S. Army hospital in Germany, where he had just been brought from Afghanistan, she didn’t hesitate when asked about organ donation.

“I said, ‘Oh, yes,’” the junior high school counselor recalls, memories still fresh of that December in 2010 when she last saw her son, Marine Cpl. Sean Osterman, 21, of Princeton, Minn., “because something good has to come out of something bad.”

Since 2006, about 140 European lives have been saved because organs — hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreases — were harvested from 36 U.S. service members determined to be brain dead from wounds suffered in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to statistics from the German foundation that oversees organ removal and implantation.

All casualties from combat funnel through the Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for care before being flown to the U.S.
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