TWO young Kent women waiting for donors have welcomed the call by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to introduce presumed consent for organ donation.

The PM believes an overhaul of the current organ donor system will save thousands of lives.

Under his proposal of presumed consent, it would allow hospitals to take organs unless people choose to opt out of the scheme - although families will still have the right to refuse.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Brown said: "A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent."

Currently, more than 9,000 patients need organ transplants and about 1,000 die waiting every year.

Jessica Wales, 18, of Linksfield Road, Westgate-on-Sea, near Margate, has been waiting two and a half years for a double lung transplant and believes presumed consent is the best way forward.

She was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a baby and was told she needed a transplant when she was 15.

She said: "This proposal of presumed consent will give a lot more people the chance to live.

"If people do not want to be part of the scheme they can opt out and their rights will be acknowledged. It has to be a good thing and I believe it is best possible way to go."

Jessica cannot work or study and if she goes out she needs to take her wheelchair, oxygen tank and medication.

She can also be on 65 pills a day, four nebulisers, plus physio and intravenous antibiotics.

Miss Wales added: "I do get frustrated. I take each day one at a time, but some days I do get scared."

The other woman in favour of the idea is Geraldine Millner, 23, from Magazine Road, Ashford, who suffers from Pulmonary Hypertension. This is where the artery connecting the lungs to the heart is weak and puts the heart under massive pressure to pump blood round the body, which can cause heart failure.

This means she cannot do any more exercise than gentle short walks without becoming sick and risking cardiac arrest.

She was diagnosed at the age of 19, and has been in and out of hospital and on various medication since then. She went on the transplant list for a double-lung in October 2007.

The 23-year-old believes introducing presumed consent will tackle the problem of donor shortages.

She said: "I have spoken to many people who have said they want to become donors but they never get round to filling the forms.

"What Gordon Brown is suggesting will eliminate that problem, and my family and I think it's a good idea."

Miss Millner added: "Everyone needs to realize how important organ donation is, because too many people dying without getting another chance

"I am living on suspended time. I am alive, but I am not living because I am not doing the things a young woman my age would normally be doing.

"Waiting for a transplant is waiting for an opportunity that only one other person in the world can give you. That person can give you a second life."

Anyone wanting to become a donor should visit UKtransplant website. It takes less than a minute to register online.