A survey conducted by the Brazilian Government shows that the number of organ donors has reached record numbers. The data was collected from the Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation (ABTO) and shows that the country is experiencing the best donation scenario in 20 years.
In 2016, there were 25,000 transplants, while in 2017 this number reached 27,000. The figures indicate that, after several years of decline and small advances, the number of transplants is growing again.
Regarding the effective donor rate – those whose organs were transplanted to other people – until 2017, this indicator grew for seven consecutive quarters – something not seen since 2009, when ABTO began publishing quarterly reports. As a result of this increase, in the last quarter of last year, the country reached a rate of 16.6 effective donors per million people (pmp).
For the president of the Alliance for Organ and Tissue Donation (Adote), Rafael Paim, several factors contributed to this improvement after years of living in a state of alert, with few donations.
According to Paim, one of the most important factors is the training of transplant teams. Among other activities, the training helped improve the way the possibility of donation was communicated to the deceased’s family.
Despite recent advances, the work is far from over. At the end of last year, more than 32,400 adult patients were on the waiting list for an organ, in addition to over 1,000 children who were also awaiting a transplant. Most of them (30,000 adults and 785 children) were waiting for kidneys or corneas.
Source: BrazilGovNews