There is something profoundly human about donation.

We may never know the person whose life is saved by the blood we give. An organ donor may never meet the person who will one day receive their organ. Yet there is an extraordinary connection between two people who may never have known each other.

One gives. Another gets more time.

World Organ Donation Day, marked on 13 August, gave us reason to reflect on this. Malta now has 30,548 people registered on the National Human Organs and Tissues Donation Register, with more than 2,410 joining during the past two and a half years.

Behind those numbers are thousands of individual decisions: people choosing that, when the time comes, something of them may continue to give life to somebody else.

But there is another number which is much harder to accept. In 2024, 8,591 patients across Europe died while waiting for an organ transplant. That is more than 23 people every day.

For them and their families, donation is not an abstract discussion about legislation or healthcare policy. It is about whether an organ becomes available before time runs out.

The same human reality exists with blood donation. Blood is needed every day, after trauma, during surgery and throughout the treatment of serious illnesses. We rarely know who receives our blood. That is part of what makes giving so remarkable: we give simply because somebody, somewhere, may need it.

As a pharmacist, I naturally look at donation through the lens of medicines, safety and scientific evidence. But my understanding of donation is not limited to the professional. It is personal too. Science should ultimately serve people.

And sometimes, as science develops, it allows more people the opportunity to help.

For years, people who had lived in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996 were unable to donate blood in Malta. The restriction was introduced as a precaution against variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD, a rare and fatal neurological disease linked to the BSE epidemic in Britain, more commonly remembered as "mad cow disease".

vCJD is caused by abnormal proteins known as prions. When evidence emerged that the disease could also be transmitted through blood transfusion, this raised concerns for blood services. With no routine blood donor screening test that could reliably identify the risk, restricting donations from people who may have been exposed was considered a necessary precaution.

But science does not stand still.

Decades of surveillance and accumulating evidence allowed that risk to be reassessed. Following updated European guidance, Malta removed the restriction in August 2026.

Around 15,000 British nationals living in Malta may now be eligible to donate, along with Maltese people who lived, studied, or worked in Britain during those years.

Perhaps even more meaningful are the around 350 people who had already expressed their willingness to give blood but were unable to do so because of the restriction. They can now be contacted and allowed to donate, subject to the usual eligibility criteria.

This is how healthcare should move forward. Rules exist to protect people, but as science evolves, we must be willing to revisit them.

This approach is also reflected in Europe's new Regulation on Substances of Human Origin, which will largely apply from 2027. For blood donation, the new framework strengthens the focus on protecting both donors and recipients, maintaining a reliable supply and ensuring that safety standards continue to reflect the latest scientific evidence.

For Malta, the removal of the UK restriction is therefore more than an isolated change. It reflects a wider principle: donor criteria should protect people without unnecessarily excluding those who can safely give.

Because behind every rule are people: someone willing to give, and someone depending on that gift being safe-both matter.

Those words carry a very personal meaning for me.

I still remember growing up with my cousin Melvin Friggieri, better known in Naxxar as Bandieri. We played together, shared our childhood mischief, and grew up with the festa as a very much a part of our lives. Melvin loved Naxxar's feast of il-Vitorja, the Nativity of Our Lady, and was known throughout Naxxar simply as Bandieri.

In November 2002, Melvin lost his life from injuries sustained in a traffic accident in Ħal Far. In the midst of that loss, organ donation gave others a chance at life.

Writing this just days before Naxxar once again celebrates il-Vitorja on 8 September makes his memory particularly close. As the village dresses itself for the festa he loved so much, I cannot help but think of him. More than two decades later, his story reminds me that organ donation is ultimately not about legislation or statistics. It is about one life touching another.

That human reality should remain at the centre of Malta's next steps.

Malta has already made important progress. People can securely register their organ donation wishes online, while the National Human Organs and Tissues Donation Register provides legal recognition of those wishes.

Our organ donation framework has also evolved. In March 2026, Parliament approved changes allowing donation after death to be considered where death is certified using neurological or circulatory criteria, widening the circumstances in which organ donation may become possible.

The earlier consultation estimated that such a change could increase transplantation by 40 to 50 per cent.

But percentages represent people.

A parent waiting for a kidney. A young person whose future depends on a transplant. A family waiting for the phone call that may change everything.

Rigorous clinical safeguards, ethical standards and respect for dignity and consent must always accompany progress. Public trust is too precious to take for granted.

But if medicine can safely create more opportunities for organ donation to give another person a chance at life, we should embrace that progress.

This should continue to guide Malta's approach to donations: not simply how many more donors we can find, but how well we honour people's willingness to give while protecting those who receive.

World Organ Donation Day celebrates the gift of life. Our responsibility is to ensure that our health system remains worthy of that gift.

We do not know what science and medicine will make possible in the years ahead. What we do know is that today, blood and organ donation still depend on something profoundly human: the willingness of one person to give so that another may have more time.

In this sense, Malta should be a country that trusts science, protects patients, respects donors and dares to update its policies when evidence changes. This convinces us to be more determined in taking every opportunity to save lives.