July 26, 2026 — 5:00am
Brooklyn Wangmann was only four years old when she died on an operating table. When medical staff asked her parents about organ donation they did not think twice.
Brooklyn gave another child her liver in a direct transplant at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead three years go. “We just felt that Brooklyn was the type of little girl who would want to help someone, and for us, it was a way for a part of her to live on,” her mother Rebecca Wangmann told The Sun-Herald’s Rachel Rasker.
Grieving and altruism meet in organ donation. Families can find that the altruistic choice to donate a loved one’s organs helps shape meaning from their sudden loss. Although widely supported, Australia is facing a critical gap between public endorsement for organ donation and actual registration rates.
Brooklyn’s story speaks to how rare paediatric donation is in Australia. Last year, just nine children nationwide became organ donors. It takes a lot for a family to say yes at such a tragic and personal moment – between 2021 and 2025, the average consent rate for donation in children under 16 was 46 per cent, compared to 55 per cent over 16.
