Delilah Saunders holds news conference from hospital bed

Kathleen Martens
APTN News
Speaking from her hospital bed, MMIWG families’ advocate Delilah Saunders said Tuesday she is recovering from acute liver failure and called for a review of provincial policies around who gets a liver.

“It’s something that needs to be revised and looked at.”

The 26-year-old thanked her family and strangers for offering to give her parts of their healthy organs.

“I didn’t plan on becoming an advocate for this sort of cause,” Saunders told reporters gathered in her Toronto hospital room. “But the more I’ve been learning about it…seeing how many families have reached out and expressed that they have had to just accept the policy despite many other factors.

Saunders was rushed to an Ottawa hospital in critical condition last week.

An emergency her family said was caused by a combination of using acetaminophen to deal with wisdom tooth pain and drinking alcohol.

Consuming alcohol within six months of needing a new liver eliminated her from a possible transplant under protocols of the Trillium Gift of Life Network, which regulates organ donation in Ontario.

It is a policy Saunders friends and family quickly labelled discriminatory and tried to change via public pressure that included vigils in different cities, an online petition and posts on social media.

“Delilah is really recovering and it looks good but she’s not out of the woods yet,” said her friend and fellow Labrador Inuk Ossie Michelin, a former APTN News reporter.

“We can’t be sure until she’s done with all the specialists.”

Saunders confirmed she “was unconscious for a while” but now has trouble sleeping.

She looked tired as she faced the cameras, but her trademark confidence as a human rights crusader was evident as she called for reforms to the transplant rules.

“Registering as a donor and also revising these outdated, antiquated policies and procedures that section off a large population…,” she said, as her younger brother and lawyer looked on…“I think that these situations should be looked at on a case-by-case basis.”

Saunders rose to prominence when her older sister Loretta Saunders was murdered in Halifax in 2014.

Delilah handled media, police and court issues, and cracked only when the killers were sentenced, screaming at them in front of the judge.

She said she was sober but turned to alcohol after reliving that experience while testifying at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) last month.

That wiped out her chance for a new liver – a health crisis she says many families have suffered and lost.

“The nurses and the doctors they have their hands tied,” she said. “My cousin brought up that in Europe, you are automatically considered a donor unless you opt out.”

Delilah doesn’t know when she will be released from hospital but said she considers herself fortunate and hopes her experience will get more people considering organ donation.

“Because that demand is so high and because people aren’t registering as donors it’s making a more difficult situation even more impossible,” she said.

“The outpouring of support has been beautiful and really, really encouraging” but she feels “for the families who have lost loved ones due to these policies, due to small technicalities, and things that could have saved so many lives.”

An email seeking comment from Trillium wasn’t immediately returned.