Transplant recipient, Dave Amer, dies

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 2

Transplant recipient, Dave Amer, dies

PA Wellington A heart transplant recipient, Dave Amer, collapsed and died at his Porirua home on Wednesday evening, eight months after transplant surgery in London. Mr Amer, aged 51, was getting ready for bed at 11.45 p.m. when he collapsed. Attempts to revive him were made by a doctor, ambulance officers, and firemen called to his home.

“He had his heart tests on Tuesday and flew through them. I just cannot understand why he is dead,” said Mr Amer’s wife, Jan, yesterday. Mr Amer, a former Social Welfare field officer, had been back at work recently and Wednesday “was just a normal day,” Mrs Amer said.

“He came home from work, laughing and joking

with me and the children,” she said.

Wellington’s first transplant patient, Mr Amer was given his new heart in a transplant at Harefield Hospital, London, on December 10 last year, and returned to Wellington in February. The Waitangirua Lions Club, of which he was a member, raised $65,000 in two weeks for the surgery. Mr Amer had his first heart attack in 1980. He suffered from coronary heart disease, which meant his coronary arteries were so damaged they could not supply his heart muscles with enough blood to work properly. He was a widower with three children when he married his second wife, Jan, who had five children of her own. The couple, who had both lost their first partners to cancer, had been married 21 months and lived with younger members of the family in their Ascot Park home.