The Tshwane SPCA has shared a piece of information that is making us smile; old pacemakers can be donated to animals to help save their lives, too.
UPDATE (16 October 2024): Since sharing this article in December 2023, the Tshwane SPCA have removed their Facebook post related to pacemaker donations. This likely due to the fact that the act of donating pacemakers to animal welfare is not a viable donation in South Africa. The burden on animal welfare at present is high and the priority is to vaccinate, spay and neuter, and find homes for animals up for adoption; complex and costly heart surgeries are sadly just not an option. So while the idea of donating a pacemaker is a beautiful one, the demand just isn’t present. If you have any insights you wish to share, please do send them to info@goodthingsguy.com and our team will look into them.
We will leave this story up for the feel-good nature and in hope that, one day, a donated pacemaker will successfully help a dog in need! – Thank you!
Tshwane, South Africa (07 December 2023) – Medical waste is a sad reality of modern medicine but the Tshwane SPCA just shared a little snippet of information that has us feeling all warm and fuzzy. Pacemakers can be reused to save dogs. Yes, you read that correctly!
According to the SPCA, when a Pacemaker is removed from a person who is no longer with us, instead of it going into a medical waste bag, it can be donated to help dogs with cardiac issues.
The SPCA urges people who have pacemakers to stipulate in their wills that the lifesaving mechanisms be donated to veterinary hospitals that can use them instead.
“If you have a pacemaker, you can put it in your Will to have your pacemaker donated to a dog in need after you pass. Pacemakers cannot be donated to another human, but they can be donated to dogs with cardiac issues who would depend on it to stay alive.
You can have the pacemaker brought to a vet of your choice. So many of those get thrown away and dogs die because people don’t know they can do this. It even saves the dog’s owner the cost of the actual pacemaker which sometimes means the difference in being able to afford lifesaving treatment or not.” – Tshwane SPCA
So if you have a pacemaker, call up your lawyer and add a clause to your will so that a dog can make use of the lifesaving medical innovation. There are currently only a handful of vets in South Africa that perform this kind of surgery and mostly they use new pacemakers. However the thought of one being donated is a feel-goodie!
Dogs that have pacemakers, can live natural, healthy and long lives. The unit is usually placed on the back of the neck, between the shoulder blades. Just as with humans, when a dog with a pacemaker dies, it needs to be removed before cremation to prevent a battery explosion.
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