A 31-year-old television journalist who last month underwent a heart transplant, thanks to a donation made by the parents of a 20-year-old Australian tourist beaten to death in Myconos, yesterday expressed his gratitude for his “unexpected gift” as medics reported a sharp rise in would-be organ donors.

Addressing a news conference at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center a month after his transplant operation, Alpha Channel reporter Costas Gribilas said he had been “overwhelmed” by the gesture made by the parents of Doujon Zammit who died following a savage beating by bar staff on Myconos last month. “They are my second family,” Gribilas said of Zammit’s mother and father whom he met last Saturday when they visited Athens for a ceremony naming the intensive care unit of the Henry Dunant Hospital after their son who was transfered there after the Myconos beating. Zammit’s father decided to donate his son’s heart, liver, kidneys and pancreas, after being told he was brain dead. The organs were successfully transplanted, saving the lives of four people, including Gribilas.

Gribilas had been on the waiting list for two months when the Zammits made their donation. “I owe them a thousand thanks,” he said.

He added that his experience had inspired him to become an organ donor. “I only ever gave blood but I am going to become the first organ donor in my family,” he remarked.

Apparently Gribilas is not the only one to have been inspired by the Zammits’ selflessness. Transplant clinics report a sharp increase in inquiries by prospective organ donors. “What our long-term efforts and legislative reforms have failed to achieve has been achieved by the generosity of this Australian father,” said the director of the Onassis clinic’s transplant unit, Petros Alivizatos. But he added: “It remains to be seen whether the State will harness this wave of potential donors.”

According to the National Transplant Organization (NTO), there 78 transplant operations had taken place in Greece in the first eight months of last year, thanks to organs donated by 36 people. This year, there had been 117 transplant operations in the same period, made possible by 61 donors.