The transplant co-ordinator at the world famous Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, Co Down, says that potentially life-saving transplant operations have been put at risk because of the non-availability of charter aircraft due to the World Cup.
Lynne Holt said that because of the crisis, she was appealing to "pop stars, sports stars, film stars and to everyone who owns a private jet" to put the aircraft at the disposal of the hospital's transplant teams for the duration of the World Cup.
"The problem is that we use charter flights at short notice to send our transplant teams to the donor hospital, but because so many of the charter planes are being used by companies to take corporate clients over to Germany for the World Cup, none is available to us," she said.
The latest problem arose when four-year- old Paul Donnelly, from the Hazelbank area of Derry city, was flown from Belfast to Newcastle for a nine-hour heart transplant last Thursday.The boy is now making a good recovery at Freeman Hospital.
"Three transplant teams were involved when donor organs from a dead child became available. The three teams have to fly separately. The heart transplant team goes first, as in Paul's case, because we only have four hours to remove the donor's heart and then transplant it into the recipient. They are followed by the liver and kidneys team and by the pancreas team.
"In Paul's situation, none of the three teams could get a charter flight," Mrs Holt said.
She said this meant the entire procedure had to be delayed 12 hours until they managed to get the teams on to scheduled flights.