Yellowknife (Apr 01/05) - The days of running your health card through the wash and reducing it to a balled-up wad of paper are over.

The Department of Health and Social Services is mailing out new plastic health cards to NWT residents to replace archaic paper documents.

Damien Healy, manager of communications for the department, said the new cards are good for five years instead of two.

"We decided to go plastic because a lot of people were laminating them under the table trying keep them to last longer," said Healy.

"We said we might as well go with a lot of what the other governments are doing, and have a bar code and have them plastic."

The department was previously unable to print health cards with plastic because its cataloguing system wasn't compatible.

The new card features a photograph taken by Yellowknife resident Robert Redshaw, showing aurora borealis lighting up the night over a backdrop of trees. The cards were printed by an Ontario-based firm called Keystone Manufacturing Ltd.

Included with the health card is an organ donor card. People who wish to donate their organs must sign one part of the card along with a witness, and then send the other part to the executor of their estate.

Healy said the new cards have received a favourable response so far.

"A lot of people think this a real good idea," said Healy.

Hay River South MLA Jane Groenewegen said the new cards are a step in the right direction, although she had hoped they would come attached with photo identification.

She said people under 16 years of age - particularly those living in small communities - often have trouble obtaining identification cards that they can use to travel by commercial airliner, which usually require photo I.D. before boarding.

"It's really tough when your taking kids for any kind of travelling unless you have passports for your kids," said Groenewegen.