Ireland’s organ donation rate ‘high’

Ireland’s organ donation rate ‘high’

Statistics released to coincide with the 10th European Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation , held on October 18, show that Ireland is placed 7th in Europe for deceased organ donations, with 21 donors per million of population (PMP) in 2007.

According to the 2008 Spanish Transplant Authority, who have published European organ donation and transplantation statistics for 2007, there were 88 deceased organ donors in Ireland last year.
“Thanks to the generosity of the Irish public, Ireland’s rate of donation is high by international standards.

“However, there is still a considerable deadly shortfall in the number of organs available for transplantation,” said Mr Mark Murphy, of the Irish Kidney Association. “A significant point is that five of the countries ahead of us are now availing of non-heart beating donors. In the UK, 23.4 per cent of all organ donors in 2007 were non-heart beating donors. This is surpassed by 41 per cent of all Dutch organ donors being from the same source. In Ireland potential non-heart beating donors organs are not considered for transplantaton at all,” he said.

In 2007, 214 patients in Ireland benefited from organ transplantation (heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas), and Ireland is in 15th place for the combination of all organ transplants, at 52.62 PMP.
Four countries are achieving over 80 transplants pmp, including Norway.

“If you look closer at Norway, they use 93 per cent of the available deceased donor kidneys; we used 84 per cent last year. They have a slightly lower deceased donation rate than Ireland. They have a substantial rate of transplants from living kidney donors, 86 in 2007 from a population of 4.7 million people. They do a similar level of liver transplantation to us and an incredible 4.5-times the level of heart transplants and 6.5-times the level of lung transplants from a similar amount of deceased organ donors to Ireland. I think we need to learn more from the Norwegian experience,” said Mr Murphy.

http://www.irishmedicalnews.ie/index.php/component/content/article/1-news/294-irelands-organ-donation-rate-high