Tinder matches with NHS to promote organ donation among under-35s

The NHS has hooked up with dating application Tinder and a bunch of celebrities to raise awareness about organ donations. The promotion will run for two weeks and is tasked with encouraging more young people to join the donation register.

Tinder is more commonly used as a dating application where users swipe right on the profile of someone they like the look of, or left on someone they don't. With the NHS promotion in place, matches made with the participating celebrities will be met with a message encouraging the user to join the health service's donation campaign.

As part of the campaign, right-swiping users will come across new accounts created for a number of celebrities. Their profiles will feature the logo of The Wait, a campaign to remind us of the time it takes for patients to receive new organs. High-profile Tinder users fronting the campaign include Olympic gold medallist Jade Jones MBE, Gemma Oaten from Emmerdale, and Made In Chelsea's Jamie Laing. Users who match with the stars will receive the message: "If only it was that easy for those in need of a life-saving organ to find a match."

There are currently just under 7,000 people on the UK transplant list, while in the last decade some 6,000 people have died while waiting for an operation. The NHS wants to encourage more younger people to join the organ donation register. Almost 40% of Tinder users are aged between 16 and 34.

Sally Johnson, director of organ donation and transplantation at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "While a third of the UK population have registered their intention to donate on the NHS Organ Donor Register, millions more support donation but haven't taken the final step to sign up...With the help of these bespoke profiles on Tinder, we'll grab people's attention and throw a spotlight on the importance of organ donation...The best part is knowing that you could save or improve up to nine individuals' lives in the future."