A local medical firm that was given a life line by city council continues to face tough times.
RegenMed, the only stand-alone bone and tissue bank in the country, was given a $500,000 donation from the city in July to help reach sustainability.
The eight-person operation was given the go ahead by the province in May to start recovering bone and tissue from donors in the region. But since then, the state-of-the-art, non-profit business has only had 12 donors.
It needs 60 every year, with a capacity to process 200 donors to break even.
While Thunder Bay does have a high donor rate on paper, the Trillium Gift of Life Network still needs permission from next of kin before ReGen Med can recover tissue. Getting that permission has been the problem RegenMed office manager Kerri Smart said.
“Thunder Bay does not have a culture of tissue donation so the number of bone and tissue donors is very low locally,” she said.
“The problem lies in contacting the family because, as you can imagine, it’s a time of upheaval and that’s not something that’s on their minds.”
Once a person dies, there is only a 24 hour window to recover tissue.
That’s why RegenMed is encouraging people to speak with their family to let them know that they are donors.
RegenMed is starting a year-long campaign soon to raise awareness about the issue.
It’s also expanding into the rest of the province so that recovery teams can travel to other hospitals across Ontario to recover tissue.
“Unfortunately, without the donors we really aren’t able to make the products that the surgeons need,” Smart said.
City council and the CEDC receive monthly updates from RegenMed as part of a stipulation that came with the money given last summer.
