AN event held in Bradford to raise awareness of organ donation among minority ethnic communities has been hailed a success.

Doctors from Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke's Hospital, representatives of NHS Blood and Organ Transplant Donation, Muslim scholars and families of transplant patients all attended and considered the ongoing issue of too few organ donations from minority communities.

It was organised by Bradford promoter Nadeem Butt, who runs a campaign encouraging the city's Muslim communities register as donors and hopes to breakdown myths about religion preventing donation.

The event included a question-and-answer session and a discussion on ways of increasing rates of organ donation in the South Asian community, which can be seen as a taboo topic.

Figures from NHS Blood and Transplant reveal the number of people donating organs has fallen for the first time in more than a decade, with the consent/authorisation rate remaining below 60 per cent.

It has made an urgent call for more donors, to prevent more patients .

According to Kidney Research UK, kidney failure is up to five times more common in people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, yet they make up less than 3.5 per cent of the NHS organ donor register.

Mr Butt said the event, last week, had been "very productive".

"We got the message across about, and I hope this initiative will save more lives," he added.

"It’s about raising awareness throughout Yorkshire. We want to make communities aware of the situation and hopefully reverse the trend – right now there is a five per cent decrease in organ donation nationally."

Shakoorr Ahmed donated a kidney to his brother in 2009 - but said the issue was not widely discussed.

"It is definitely a subject that’s not much talked about in the Asian community," the 31-year-old said.

Sarah Boul of the Strategic Clinical Network of Yorkshire and Humber, said: "Patients that have transplants always say what a life changing experience it is. It’s really important that everyone has the opportunity to have a transplant and live a much more normal life than one on dialysis."

Linda Pickering, Advocacy Officer for the National Kidney Federation, added: "I think a lot of it has to do with religious perception of transplants, although there are no barriers within a lot of religions to transplanting organs."

For more about the campaign email nadeembutt_3@hotmail.com.