Many patients are waiting for an organ donation

No upward trend in organ donation in sight

06/03/2014

Many critically ill people in Germany are waiting for an organ donation. After the scandals for manipulation in the organ donation drastically reduced the number of donors, there is still no upward trend in sight. The nationwide day of organ donation on Saturday wants to inform about the topic.

Around 11,000 patients are waiting for an organ donation
In Germany, around 11,000 patients are waiting for an organ donation. Every day, on average, three of them die because they can not receive an organ in time. Although, according to a survey commissioned by the Federal Center for Health Education, 68 percent of Germans agree to donate their organs after death, last year so few people donated organs as never before. Only 876 organ donors were recorded in 2013.

Scandals about manipulation of organs
One reason for this is seen in the scandals about manipulation in organ allocation. Even physicians and nurses in clinics have changed their attitude to organ donation to negative, as a research team to Thomas Breidenbach, Managing Director of the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation (DSO) in Bavaria reported last month. According to a report from „The mirror“, As part of a study, the scientists had evaluated almost 3,000 questionnaires from 50 Bavarian clinics. It noted 28 percent that recent developments have had a negative impact on this attitude. Politics, medicine and DSO organizing organ donation in Germany have been discussing consequences and reforms since the scandals.

No uptrend in Thuringia in sight
But so far, an upward trend is not yet in sight. At least not in Thuringia, where in the first four months of this year DSO donated 24 organs after death. These came from a total of eight deceased. This is about at the level of the past year, when the number of organ donations in Thuringia for the first time in years had fallen to below 100. The number of critically ill patients who are urgently waiting for a life-saving donor organ, however, remains high. 340 people were in the Free State at the end of April.

Nationwide day of organ donation
On Saturday, physicians, patient associations, health insurances, celebrities and politicians want to inform about the issue nationwide on the day of organ donation. The central event for this year's action day will take place in Stuttgart with Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe (CDU). Katrin Altpeter (SPD), Minister of Health in Baden-Württemberg, called for more people to find out about a possible organ donation and to document their decision in a donor card: „Each organ donation can save one of the approximately 11,000 seriously ill patients who are waiting for a donor organ in Germany.“ Only 28 percent of Germans have an organ donor card. (Ad)