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Southwest Transplant Alliance and Tissue Banks International
Partner to Improve Service to Community

Southwest Transplant Alliance and Tissue Banks International (TBI) have reached an agreement aimed to improve the donation of human organs, tissues and eyes in El Paso and Hudspeth Counties, Texas. Under this new program, the El Paso location of Southwest Transplant Alliance, working in conjunction with TBI’s El Paso Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank, will provide tissue and eye recovery services, in addition to maintaining its current services as the regional organ procurement organization. The El Paso Eye &Tissue Transplant Bank, a member of the Tissue Banks International non-profit network, will evaluate and prepare the tissues recovered for patient use and distribution back to El Paso and elsewhere.

“We are excited that for the first time in Texas, all organ, eye, and tissue recovery can be handled by a single agency and staff,” says James Cutler, Chief Executive Officer of Southwest Transplant Alliance. Don Ward, TBI’s Executive Director for the El Paso Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank, agrees. “While our organizations work cooperatively today, we believe this new program with Southwest Transplant Alliance reemphasizes the importance of all anatomical gifts and collectively helps address the medical needs of many more patients.”

Cutler adds, “We are pleased to be partnering with a program that has served El Paso for many years. Furthermore, through El Paso Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank’s relationship with TBI, we are affiliating with the world’s largest non-profit eye banking network, and one of the largest non-profit tissue banking operations in the United States.”

“Our values and goals as non-profit organizations serving the community are aligned,” says Ward. “We are confident that this partnership will enhance our vision, and increase donation in the El Paso community.”

Southwest Transplant Alliance, the federally designated organ donation center for El Paso and Hudspeth Counties, has served El Paso for 27 years as its organ donation agency. It works closely with all acute care hospitals in the area, and the kidney transplant center of Sierra Medical Center. “Federal law requires all hospitals to notify their organ donation agency of all deaths. Now a single line of donation services to the health care community can be provided by Southwest Transplant Alliance that receives those calls. A single resource coordinating reporting of all types of donation will make donor referrals much quicker and smoother for hospital personnel and should help to increase donation in El Paso,” says Cutler.

The non-profit El Paso Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank has provided eye and tissue banking services to the El Paso community for more than eight years. It is a member of the TBI/Tissue Banks International non-profit network of 33 eye and tissue bank locations around the United States celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year. For more than eight years, the El Paso Eye & Tissue Transplant Bank, and Tissue Banks International have provided surgeons and hospitals throughout El Paso with hundreds of tissue and eye allografts for implantation. This new arrangement anticipates even greater tissue recovery from and distribution to the area. For more information, visit theSouthwest Transplant Alliance web site at www.organ.org