'Spare Clare' organ donation plea

Claire Riley received a life-saving liver transplant in 2004

A woman whose life was saved by a liver transplant is spearheading a campaign to get more people to join the organ donor register.

Claire Riley, from Perth, received the transplant aged 27, a year after being diagnosed with a chronic liver disease.

The mother-of-two, now 33, said the donated organ had given her a life "free of pain and anxiety".

Three people die every day in Scotland waiting for an organ transplant, the Scottish government said.

Mrs Riley is the figurehead of the £500,000 "Spare Clare" campaign.

Doctors diagnosed her with ulcer colitis after she started having severe stomach pains. It developed into sclerosis cholangitis, a chronic condition.

Mrs Riley said: "Doctors had told me at some point I might need a transplant but you never think it will actually happen to you.

Someone sadly had to pass away for me to live Claire Riley

"I was just married when I started to get really ill. I went yellow and people would stare at me in the street. I tried ignoring it but I eventually stopped going out of the house."

Mrs Riley was just six-and-a-half stone when she received her liver transplant at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

She added: "Once the liver kicked in I started to feel so much better, it was so different, I had much more strength and it felt like I had a new lease of life.

"Someone sadly had to pass away for me to live but that person had selflessly joined the Organ Donation Register and was able to help save me."

Mrs Riley went on to have her first baby two years after the operation in 2004 and her second 14 weeks ago.

Death 'taboo'

John Forsythe, Scotland's lead clinician for organ donation and transplantation, said organ donor numbers had begun to rise in Scotland over the past few years.

He said: "This means that people like Claire, who otherwise face a bleak outlook with organ failure, are given the opportunity of life through transplantation.

"In our society, nobody likes talking about death, there is a taboo about the subject.

"However, those people who have elected to join the organ donor register or who have spoken with their families about organ donation at the time of death make a most generous decision which allows others to live."