World Organ and Tissue Transplantation Day: More than 3,000 patients in Colombia are waiting

Today, February 27, marks the World Organ and Tissue Transplantation Day. In the midst of this situation, the competent authorities have been instructed to make public the balance sheets of the panorama that exists in Colombia with regard to this issue. According to what was revealed by the National Institute of Health (INS), in Colombia last year 1,190 transplants were performed. Regarding what happened in 2021, for the year 2022 execution of this process increased by 21.1%.

“The increase in the number of transplants is reflected over the past two years, 2021 and 2022, due to the increase in cadaveric donors and living donors. Both figures compared to the year 2021, recorded a variation 26.9% positive. Last year, Colombia managed to transport 882 recipients of organs from cadaveric donors and 233 recipients of organs from living donors to effective transplants, for a total of 1,190 transplants performed“Commented the INS through a press release addressed to public opinion.

According to the director of the entity, Giovanny Rubiano, the country remains on “a path of resumption of transplants in 3 years of pandemic, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that 3,663 Colombians wait for an organ and from this total, 3,328 need a kidney”. ” The last two years, 67% of transplants performed were renal. It is too important to strengthen prevention, promote self-care and avoid the progression of kidney disease to stages 4 and 5,” the official added via his social networks.

According to the Ministry of Health, as of October 2021, organ donation and transplantation has not stopped during the pandemic. “Even with the pandemic, donation and transplant activities in the country have not been suspended, despite the saturation of the health system and intensive care units, and that these have continued under protocols strict biosecurity,” they explained, speaking of the variation in numbers that there was and is now being exposed by the National Institute of Health.

According to what he explained, in Colombia, according to the law, all citizens are organ and tissue donors, unless they are asked not to be donors during their lifetime. “We must maintain the promotion of altruistic giving in civil society and in the hospital environment. Improve our donation rate, which is 6.4 donors per million inhabitants; and maintain and improve the transplant rate, which is 23.2 transplants per million population,” he said.

The Colombian Ministry of Health and Social Protection, as stated on its website, defines organ and tissue donation as “a voluntary act by which a living person or his family after his death authorizes the removal of organs and tissue for transplant, to help other people. Donation is selfless and altruistic, since there is no remuneration or compensation for the donor or his family. For every organ and tissue donor more than 55 people can benefit from it”.

According to what the surgeon Andrés Murcia commented in the testimonies compiled by Noticias Caracol, “Unfortunately, compared to other countries, we are well below Europe, where there are 32 donors per million inhabitants; it’s here of eight. Perhaps everything is due to myths, lack of education. In the myths what sounds the most is organ trafficking and I want to emphasize that this does not exist in Colombia, there is no type of documentation in forensic medicine that organ theft file”.

In an interview with W Radio, Dr. Carolina Guarín, executive director of the Colombian Organ Transplant Association, explained that there is no exchange of money with regard to the Don. “It’s something voluntary when you die and it’s controlled by the entities, it’s something completely transparent. There is a network that determines where they go, but for the donor they do not know who goes receive it, it sometimes happens that the donor is asked for compensation and there have been adverse experiencess,” he pointed out.