A TOP Southampton academic has won funding of more than £160,000 to carry out pioneering research into organ donation.

Dr Sheila Payne from the University of Southampton will join forces with colleagues in Surrey to conduct the study over the next three years.

The team will investigate why some families agree to donation and why others object - and how the grieving process plays a part in both decisions.

Dr Payne said: "It's obviously a very sad and difficult time for families but there are also some positive aspects that come out of organ donation.

"The organs that are used tend to come from younger people whose deaths were unexpected - road accidents for example.

"For some families it helps give meaning to this kind of tragic death."

Research has shown that around two thirds of relatives asked are willing to donate the organs of a dead relative and a third are not.

The new study, the first of its kind in Britain, will compare 25 families who agree to donation with another 25 who decline.

The aim is to use the information to improve support services for bereaved families and better educate health professionals.

"We want to understand why the relatives make the decisions they do, if they later change their mind and whether or not the experience helps them come to terms with their bereavement," said Dr Payne.

The announcement comes less than a month after revelations that the UK Transplant Support Service Authority, which co-ordinates organ transplants, accepted a man's kidneys for transplant with the family's condition that they be used by a white person.

Dr Payne said: "We will be asking people's views on these kinds of issues but that's a very, very unusual request for a family to make and it hasn't been an issue in previous studies."

Currently 6,500 people in the UK are waiting for organ transplants but a third of these will die before one is available.

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