Update: Mom Pleads for Help to Save Dying 10-Year-Old Daughter

Yesterday, I blogged about the parents of 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who are fighting immoral federal organ donor rules, which are preventing her from getting the lung transplant she needs to save her life. Sarah has cystic fibrosis, and doctors say she has only weeks to live. But because Sarah is 10 years old and not 12, she can only receive a donor lung after all of the adult candidates have received the chance.

Today, Sarah's mother is pleading for her life. The following update is from FOX News:

Sarah’s mother, Janet, joined America’s Newsroom to plead for help for her little girl. She described the rules that are preventing Sarah from receiving a transplant. Candidates over the age of 12 are given a lung allocation score after doctors look at a number of factors associated with their condition, including the severity of their illness. “The organs are given out based on who’s the sickest. It’s basic triage medicine. The sickest patient is treated first,” Murnaghan said.

If a patient is under the age of 12, however, the lungs are not necessarily given to the sickest patients. Candidates are determined to be either priority 1 or priority 2, and the amount of time you have been waiting for an organ plays a part in determining where you fall on the list. Murnaghan stressed that these children also only have access to pediatric lungs, about 20 of which become available every year.

“It’s unreal to me that they are saying they can’t quantify my daughter’s illness when her doctors can quantify it. They’ve told me that we’re in the final weeks. That she will be intubated soon without a lung transplant. And that intubation with end-stage cystic fibrosis is the end. We are very close to the end. We have weeks,” she said.

Murnaghan is pushing for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to override the rules so that Sarah can receive a transplant. “The children are at the back of the line and we need Madame Secretary to step in and say that’s not right,” she said.

While Sarah isn’t aware of the controversy surrounding her lung transplant, she is “aware that she is sick, that she is getting sicker, and she is worried that she is dying.”

Watch the video here.

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