Organs of woman killed on motorcycle save lives of 4 people

Aliza Goldenberg of Ra’anana was killed while sitting behind the driver of a motorcycle and suffered lower-brain death last week.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Aliza Goldenberg 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Aliza Goldenberg 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
One month short of her 21st birthday and having recently completed her IDF service, Aliza Goldenberg of Ra’anana was killed while sitting behind the driver of a motorcycle and suffered lower-brain death last week. Her shocked family noted that she carried an ADI organ-donor card and agreed that five organs could be used for transplant.
Goldenberg, who had served in a choice IDF unit near Hebron, thus saved the lives of four people and made her family feel that she would live forever.
She was rushed from the site of the accident to the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva, but she arrived in a state of brain death.
When the transplant coordinator asked if the family would donate her organs, they said they knew she had an ADI card and wanted to honor her will.
Her lungs were transplanted into a 63-year-old man, her liver into a 56-year-old woman and a kidney into a 51-year-old man at Beilinson. Her other kidney and pancreas were transplanted into a 46-year-old man at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. All four recipients are doing well.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people of all ages who had undergone lung transplants at Beilinson met last week at Kfar Hamaccabiah for an annual event organized by Prof.
Mordechai Kramer, head of the medical center’s lung institute.
One moving encounter was between the Dror family in Kibbutz Lavie, which donated the organs of their 15-year-old son, and 21-year-old Hedva Fallah of Bnei Brak, who received his lungs.
About 70 percent of Israel’s organ transplants are performed at Beilinson.