The Diplomat
Last year, Spain contributed 22% of the total number of organ donors in the European Union and 5% of those registered in the world, which allows our country to maintain its international leadership in terms of donation and transplantation.
This was announced last Thursday by the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, during a visit to the Nicosia General Hospital (NGH), the reference clinic in transplants in Cyprus (which has resumed its activity in this area after the break due to the pandemic by COVID-19), in which she was accompanied by her Cypriot counterpart, Michalis Hadjipantela.
According to Darias, the transplant activity after the pandemic has recovered worldwide, with an increase of more than 13 percent during the fiscal year 2021 and with 40% more living donor transplants in renal transplants. He also assured that Spain, which maintains its international leadership with donation and transplant rates higher than those of the surrounding countries, last year contributed 22% of the total number of donors in the European Union and 5% of those registered in the world, despite the fact that it barely represents 10% of the European population and 0.6% of the world’s population.
Darias offered Spain’s maximum collaboration with the Cypriot health authorities in the exchange of training in the field of transplants at the medical and healthcare level. In 2010, the Government of Cyprus developed a strategy to strengthen this area through the creation of a public center in charge of establishing the standards for the Safety and Quality of Solid Organ Transplants. The center was installed at the Nicosia General Hospital (NGH) as it is the largest in the country and located in the capital, making it the reference clinic for transplants in the country, with an average of 21 kidney transplants per year. During the institutional visit to Cyprus, the Minister also visited the Karaiskakio Foundation, which carries out important work in the fight against leukemia and in favor of bone marrow donation.
