​​​​​​​If you wish to donate organs, tissues, or both after death, talk to your family about what you want to happen when you die. Tell them you want to donate organs, tissues, or both.

If you are 18 years old or older and interested in becoming an organ or tissue donor, learn more about registering your consent (permission) to be a donor.

If  you are interested in living donation, learn more about living organ donation.

Personal choice and feelings

Feelings about organ and tissue donation are personal and different for everyone.

Most religious traditions support organ and tissue donation. Talk to a religious leader or spiritual advisor if you have questions.

Most families feel that organ and tissue donation helped ease their grief after the death of a loved one. They find comfort knowing they helped another person.

Talk to your family about organ and tissue donation, and tell them what you want to happen when you die.

Who donors are 

Most organ and tissue donors are people who have died in a hospital and have been declared dead.

Potential donors are tested for certain diseases (such as HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or sepsis) or high-risk social behaviours. This is to make sure donated organs and tissues are healthy and safe for the people receiving them.

Organs and tissues that are not healthy cannot be donated.

Organ donors

An organ donor must die in a way that allows them to be on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. This is sometimes called brain death or neurological death. Brain death is not reversible and is different from a coma.

When damage to the brain is severe, the brain swells, stopping blood flow in the brain. With no blood flow, the brain doesn't get oxygen and nutrients, and it dies.

Once the brain dies, the body will also die. The body can't breathe on its own and must be kept on a ventilator.

Tissue donors

To be a tissue donor, the person who is dead generally does not need to be kept on a ventilator.

People can be organ donors at any age. 

Livers have been successfully transplanted from 90-year-old donors, and lungs, livers, and kidneys have been transplanted from 70-year-old donors.

Anyone 80 years old and younger can be a tissue donor.

To register your consent​ to be an organ or tissue donor, you must be 18 years old or older.

Place of death

A person who dies outside of the hospital—such as in a nursing home, private home, or at the scene of an accident— can't be an organ donor.  

Organ donation is only possible when the heart is beating and the organs are getting blood and oxygen. It may still be possible for the person to be a tissue donor, depending on when and how they died.