FOR Bernard Dunleavy to live someone had to die.

It's a harsh, often unpalatable thought, yet Bernard like thousands of others across the country is living testimony to the success of the organ donor transplantation service.

It was five years ago that Bernard, now 63, was given a new heart at Wythenshawe Hospital, the heart of a girl who had died when the same age as Bernard's own daughter -18.

"Coming to terms with the fact that a family somewhere is mourning a loss, while you have been given an opportunity to live is one of the toughest things you have to come to terms with," said Bernard, a committed Catholic who, before the operation had been given just five months to live.

The transplant was the culmination of years of ill health and major operations to repair his badly damaged heart. During the early 1990s Bernard's condition deteriorated to such a point that he was forced to give up his lecturing job at Bolton College and endured a poor quality of life, until he himself broached the subject of a transplant with surgeons at Wythenshawe.

"My family thought it was a terrible thing, far too risky but I knew it was the only real chance. I had very little in the way of quality of life, even speaking for long periods was too much for me and there was simply no option," said Bernard, who lives in Bury.

It's reckoned 3,000 people took on a new lease of life last year and a further 3,000 regained their eyesight through corneal transplant. All were reliant on people carrying organ donor cards.

To highlight the need for donors and encourage more to take the simple step of carrying donor cards, Bolton Rotary Club with Bernard's support will be in Bolton's Crompton Place Shopping Centre tomorrow and Saturday. Information and advice from medical and surgical specialists and recipients such as Bernard will be on hand to answer the public's questions.

"We hope to demonstrate to the public just how easy it is to become an organ donor and how their wishes will be registered which will ease the ordeal of dependants and loved ones at a traumatic and emotional time," said Bolton Rotary Club official George Mortimore.

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