THE situation of Blackburn schoolgirl Emily Linaker brings a real human face to the issue of organ donation.

The 13-year-old is on the waiting list for a life-saving heart transplant and has to face an agonising wait until she gets the go-ahead.

She must then dash to Newcastle within a four-hour window to have the vital operation. The problem is that she is one of 15 children among 211 people on the waiting list for a heart transplant.

Last year 142 such operations were carried out-but only around 20 on children-at either Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital or London’s Great Ormond Street.

On average a heart transplant gives people like Emily another 20 years of life but there is a shortage of donors.

Clearly donation is a very difficult decision for any family to make when it has just suffered the death of a child, and parents are at their most grief stricken. That was one of the thoughts behind the decision earlier this month by the Welsh Assembly to go ahead with an opt-out system of organ donation. Perhaps it is something that should at least be debated here in England too.