Thanks to New Transplant Donor Recovery Center, OneLegacy Freed Hospital ICU Beds and Enabled the Transplant of More Than 1,600 Lifesaving Organs

OneLegacy announced today that it achieved two major milestones in 2022, helping more organ donors and families share the gift of life than ever in its history and the December opening of its new Transplant Donor Recovery Center in Azusa. The not-for-profit organ, eye and tissue recovery organization serving seven counties in Southern California enabled 647 organ donors in 2022, which is a 9.5 percent increase from 2021. One-third of these donors were transported to OneLegacy’s Redlands and Azusa Transplant Donor Recovery Centers, saving the lives of more than 1,600 people and freeing hundreds of hospital ICU beds to serve other patients, while also enabling 133,000 site-saving and healing tissue transplants.

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This remarkable achievement – all thanks to the generosity of donors and their families – has been possible due to the coordinated efforts of more than 350 OneLegacy employees, over 200 local hospitals and 10 transplant centers, with the goal of saving and healing the lives of thousands of Southern Californians waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

"Thanks to our Transplant Donor Recovery Centers in Redlands and Azusa, we were able to increase the number of organ donors in 2022, saving the lives of urgently waiting transplant patients while also freeing some 700 ICU bed days for critical care patients at our local hospitals that have seen bed shortages since the start of COVID,” said OneLegacy CEO Prasad Garimella. “We are immensely grateful for the continuous support of healthcare providers, as well as our staff and, most importantly, local donors and their families who have said ‘YES’ to organ, eye and tissue donation, saving and healing thousands of lives in Southern California.”

Garimella projects that the new Transplant Donor Recovery Center in Azusa can potentially increase the number of lives saved and healed even further in 2023. “We look forward to working closely with local donor hospital partners and transplant centers to help free up more ICU beds and allow for more lives to be saved and healed in 2023 and many years to come,” says Garimella.

In the year just concluded, OneLegacy enabled the transplant of 1,628 organs from 647 donors, reflecting the organization’s eighth consecutive year of record-breaking increases in lifesaving and healing organ donation and transplantation. In addition, in 2022 1,030 people had their vision restored through cornea transplants, and more than 133,000 lives were saved and healed through tissue donation and transplantation.

The 2022 performance by OneLegacy is part of a nationwide effort to increase the number of lives saved through organ donation. Thanks to this performance, OneLegacy was able to contribute to a historic 2022 milestone, when the U.S. achieved its one millionth organ transplant in early September, surpassing any other country in the world. Thanks to the collective skills and dedication of thousands of organ donation and transplantation professionals, the nation is on track to enable more than 40,000 lifesaving transplants this year.

The record setting performance and the new Azusa facility’s opening in 2022 were just two of many noteworthy achievements for OneLegacy in the year just concluded. Other milestones included:

• OneLegacy hosted its first in-person annual Donate Life Run/Walk after two years of virtual events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event attracted thousands of people at Azusa Pacific University to celebrate the power of organ, eye and tissue donation and transplantation.
• OneLegacy celebrated 20 years of participation in the iconic Rose Parade® as the producer and lead sponsor of the 2023 Donate Life Rose Parade^® float, the world’s most visible campaign to inspire organ, eye and tissue donation and share the important message that donation saves lives. Produced by OneLegacy, the 2023 float, themed “Lifting Each Other Up,” earned the coveted Sweepstakes Award, the top award given by the Tournament of Roses judges for the most beautiful entry, and thereby garnering millions more impressions locally and across the country that shared the life-saving message of caring for one another by registering to be a donor. The Rose Parade is a globally televised event and winning the coveted Sweepstakes Award heightened the reach of the mission - to bring international awareness to the importance of organ, eye and tissue donation.

About OneLegacy

OneLegacy is the not-for-profit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. It serves more than 200 hospitals, 10 transplant centers, a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. Becoming an eye, organ or tissue donor is easy and can be done by registering online at donateLIFEcalifornia.org/OneLegacy or by “checking YES” at your local DMV. For more information, visit OneLegacy.org

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