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Apart from organs and skin, one can also donate corneas, bone and heart valves.

To register as organ and tissue donors go to www.odf.org.za or www.tissuedonation.org.za or call the
toll free number at: 0800 22 66 11.

Background on TUT’s Centre for Tissue Engineering:

The Centre for Tissue Engineering (CTE) was established in September 2002 following, an agreement
between TUT and Bone SA. Prof Mariette Lowes, Dean of the Faculty of Science at the time and Mrs
Marthina Lutz of Bone SA, signed the deal to form the second human bone bank in South Africa.

Initially, is was quite challenging to establish itself as a role player in the industry – entering the small
world of organ and tissue donation was not easy and people were very sceptical and protective of
their areas of work.

By 2005 and under the directorship of Prof Daniel du Toit, the CTE gained good support and donor
numbers continue to increase steadily.

Some of the CTE’s mile stones:

2006 CTE obtained ISO 9000 accreditation for its Quality Management System for the first time –
something which is extremely important to the end-users of the tissue products.

2007 the premises at the Arcadia campus became too small and with the assistance and support from
Bone SA, we moved to the CSIR and are proud of our state of the art laboratories.

During 2009 CTE obtained the sought after ISO 13485 accreditation and in the same year procured the
1000th donor.
In 2011 we were approached by the Pretoria Eye Institute and agreed to take over their cornea
banking program. At that time, a formal decision was taken to expand the CTE business to include
other cadaveric tissues as well.

In the same year, CTE’s Sandra vd Berg was awarded an international eye banking fellowship
sponsored by the Eye Banking Association of America. The current eye banking program is based on
the knowledge she gained during those 6 weeks. Despite low donor numbers, our corneas are hailed
as world class.

In 2011 the CTE also coordinated the drafting of regulations for tissue bank which were promulgated
in 2012.

At the end of 2012, under the late Prof Pieter Marais as the Dean of the Faculty of Science at TUT, we
celebrated 10 years of successful tissue banking. In line with the CTE’s tradition of building strong
industry relationships it became a role player in the formation of the South African Tissue Bank
association (SATiBA). Cleo Ndhlovu, Manager of CTE and Sandra Venter, CTE PRO currently serve as
directors of SATiBA.

In 2014 Cleo Ndhlovu visited Europe to improve her qualification in organ & tissue donation and
transplantation. During the 3 months she spent there, she established invaluable contacts and gained
world class knowledge in all aspects of tissue banking.