Transplant surgeon John Powelson is a man with a mission.

After performing no less than 650 transplant operations during his career so far, he is in Bermuda this week to help people understand the donation process and encourage more people to carry cards.

A kidney transplant surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where the majority of donated organs from Bermuda are taken and where many of the Island's recipients undergo surgery, he has witnessed the goodness that can come out of death.

He said there was no patient quite like an organ donor recipient. After thinking about the possibility of death on an almost daily basis, he said they were among the most grateful people he encountered in his working life.

And with a 95 percent success rate, he said thousands of people every year in the US are receiving renewed and improved lives after undergoing an organ transplant.

Addressing members of the Bermuda Organ and Tissue Donor Council last night, Dr. Powelson said the whole process of donation was by no means an easy one, but one that had been fine-tuned over the years so that every single second counted.

With literally only a few hours to prepare, remove and transplant the organs, it takes a great deal of precision, timing and expertise, and of course, many hands.

He said: "It's a huge endeavour to carry out the organ donation process. There is effort from the donor family all the way up to the organ banks, and back down to the recipient.

"It involves a huge amount of people and co-ordination, but when you see the difference it makes to the recipient at the end, it is worth everything."

Dr. Powelson visited the Island this week to coincide with Bermuda's Organ and Tissue Donor Week and to lecture to doctors and nursing staff at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital about donation.

He congratulated Bermuda for setting up the council and encouraged the members to educate as many people as possible, including through the churches, schools and businesses.

"I think the council is a very huge effort to try to inform the public about donation because it can have a huge impact on numerous people who receive the donations.

"Death is inevitable and going through that process, of donating organs, can be very positive for the donor's family. Although their loved one has died, their organs are living on in others.

"I have been a general surgeon, and then I went on to work on transplant patients, both of the liver and kidney.

"What I have found is that the transplant patients are among the most thankful I have served. They are tremendously thankful to their families, the donor family and the medical staff.

"These are patients who are not only thankful, but they have thought about dying more than anyone else. They have thought about it so much, that it gives them more of a sense of the value of life - both the value of the life of the donor and of their own.

"Some recipients, when they come out of the transplant, have said immediately, 'how can I thank the donor family'.

"The donation has such a huge impact on everyone."

Dr. Powelson urged members of the public to take the opportunity of having free health checks this week organised by the donor council, and said everyone should pick up a donor card from either a Post Office, doctor's surgery or TCD.

Health checks will be held every day between 11.30 a.m. and 2 p.m. at TCD, the Bank of Butterfield in Reid Street, and the adult library in Queen Street.

He added: "I think that as a donor, you have the possibility of giving life to six people, if all the major organs are used. You can touch six lives and possibly even save them, and if you count tissues and eyes, you help bring the sparkle of life to many more.

"That is a huge gift from just one person."