Turkey needs more organ donations

On organ donation week, officials say a lack of coordination between staff at intensive care departments and Health Ministry officials is a major problem in Turkey. ‘Many organs cannot be transffered due to lack of information,’ an official says underlining that Turkey urgently needs a databank to help increase the number

More than 50,000 patients in Turkey are suffering from kidney failure and are in need of transplants, according to an organ transplant official in Istanbul. The situation for patients who need other life-saving organs such as a heart, pancreas, liver, small intestine or cornea, however, is far worse.

Many of the problems stem from low public awareness on organ donation that is exacerbated by the lack of a patient databank, said Mümin Uzunalan, the organ transplant coordinator at Istanbul’s Memorial Hospital. The number of organ donors is increasing, with 3.7 percent of the population now registered to provide organs, but Turkey needs a databank to help increase the number of transplants, he said.

Although there is a common belief that Islam forbids the donation of organs, the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate’s Supreme Council declared in 1980 that cadaver organ donation for the purpose of transplantation was religiously permissible. An official from the directorate told the Hürriyet Daily News that the institution’s muftis and imams held nationwide training sessions on the issue.Injuring the dead body is prohibited only by Buddhism, even to save a human life, said the coordinator.

A single patient requiring a dialysis machine costs the state more than 50,000 Turkish Liras, according to a recent health report from a Turkish hospital. There are more than 55,000 patients who are suffering from chronic kidney failure, and this number is expected to reach 95,000 by 2016, according to Uzunalan. Despite the high number of patients, only 17 percent have been able to receive organ transplants. The high costs have forced the state to focus on the issue of organ donation and accelerate the process of finding donors, Uzunalan said.


/Hurriyet Daily News/