Organ donation cards issuance surge in Iran

TEHRAN – While only 300 organ donor cards have been issued per day on average in the country over the past years, the number has now increased to 14,000, deputy director for the Iranian Society of Organ Donation has said.

Currently, some 5 million Iranians have organ donor cards, IRNA quoted Omid Qobadi as saying on Saturday.

Some 5,000 people die of brain death annually in Iran, he said, lamenting that out of 3,000 brain deaths reported last year being qualified to be organ donors, only 926 donated their organs.

He went on to say that organs that can be donated in human bodies include both kidneys and lungs, heart, liver, intestine and pancreas.

“Last year, nearly 750 livers, 2,300 kidneys, 130 hearts, 10 lungs and 12 pancreas were donated and transplanted,” he highlighted.

The main factor in enhancing organ donation is raising public awareness and promoting the culture of organ donation to prevent many patients waiting in transplant lists losing their lives, he said.

Referring to 200 to 300 donor cards being issued daily in the past, Qobadi noted that after offering various cultural and training courses, within two weeks, the rate increased by 42 times, which is currently 14,000 to 15,000 per day.

Earlier in May, the Masih Daneshvari hospital’s manager Ali Akbar Velayati said that some 10,000 people are waiting in transplant lists and every day some 10 people waiting for an organ lose their lives.

The Iranian Society of Organ Donation is a non-profit organization established in 2016, aiming at raising awareness of organ donation, promoting the culture of donating organs, education and research and offering social working services to the families of organ donors, which have been assigned by the Ministry of Health.