A proud mother has revealed that EastEnders really does have the power to change lives – or, in this case, SAVE them…
In an emotional interview on BBC News, Margaret Hitchcock discussed how a BBC storyline from 2013 inadvertently saved five lives.
Five years ago, the BBC soap featured a plot line in which Dexter Hartman donated a kidney to Sam James.
At that moment, watching at home in Sheffield, 18-year-old Cian Pace made the decision to become a donor.
Little did anyone know that, tragically, the boy would die just weeks later.
His mother told the news programme: “[Cian said] Oh, I would be an organ donor. The only thing is I wouldn’t donate my heart, because that’s my essence, and my eyes.”
Recalling the incident now, Margaret added: “We laughed, and that was the end of it. We put it behind us because we didn’t think that would ever happen.”
However, in a tragic twist of fate just days after Cian’s 19th birthday, the teenager lost his life in a fatal car crash.
She explained: “When he was in hospital on life support they said, ‘Would you be interested in him being a donor?’
“And we both said, ‘Yes we would.’ If it hadn’t been for watching EastEnders, we wouldn’t have known that.”
Three days after the accident, Cian died and his organs – although not his eyes and heart as he’d requested – were then removed and helped to save the lives of five people waiting for transplants.
His mother added: “One was a two-year-old boy, one was a 14-year-old girl, one was a man in his 30s, and one was an older man. That little boy might then go on to have a family, that young girl now can go to university, and they have a life.
“I felt very sad but I felt very proud that he didn’t just go to waste. He saved five people’s lives.”
EastEnders’ kidney donation storyline is one of many hard-hitting soap plots that have been designed to get people talking and tackle controversial subjects.
Just last year, Aidan Connor donated his kidney to Carla in Coronation Street.
Fiona Loud from Kidney Care UK, says TV dramas get through to viewers better than any official campaign or news report.
“Soaps can reach those parts that public messages can’t reach in the same way,” she says.
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