LifeNet Health Northwest wants people to seriously consider registering to become a tissue, organ or cornea donor this April for National Donate Life Month.

The organ donation and tissue banking services agency has a facility in Renton, where they have a recovery suite, process and storage area, to house donations until they are deemed suitable and safe for transplantation. LifeNet Health Northwest was founded as the Northwest Tissue Center in the late 1980s by the Puget Sound Blood Center, the University of Washington and the Northwest Kidney Center.

“The numbers are improving particularly out here in the Northwest,” said Mark VanAllman, general manager for the center. “The states of Montana, Washington, Alaska and Oregon tend to have higher registry rates than other states. For some reason people in the Northwest think more about giving and recycling in that way.”

The demand for organs still outweighs the supply, he said, so it’s important people take the steps to register if they are interested. Still, there are a number of reasons people hold back VanAllman said.

“For some folks, there are religious concerns that the body has to be whole,” he said. “For some folks, they just feel like maybe doctors aren’t going to do everything they can do to save people necessarily, which is totally false. It’s just a very personal decision for people.”

The biggest challenge is informing potential donors about the benefits of donation, like donating to children who were born with congenital heart defects, said the general manager.

“I think it’s just a matter of how well informed you are in the benefits of tissue donation,” VanAllman said.

He also notes that as far as tissues are concerned, LifeNet Health Northwest distributes more than 500,000 allograft bioimplants per week to patients in need. The center serves the Pacific Northwest in providing hospital and community education, tissue recovery, tissue processing and distribution services. LifeNet Health Northwest also receives tissues processed in their Virginia location and they serve as the primary distribution center for Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Arkansas, Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado and Northern California.