Portugal registered around a thousand organ transplants in 2023, this being the highest number ever recorded in the country, Health Minister Manuel Pizarro announced today.
«The numbers are still preliminary and very positive. In 2023, there will have been 966 organs transplanted and this is, in fact, the highest number ever, far surpassing the number from the previous year and the previous record, which was set in 2009", he highlighted.
At the end of the opening session of the II National Organ Donation Days, which take place today in Coimbra, Manuel Pizarro alluded to the fact that organ transplantation is limited to the availability of organs that can be transplanted.
«We usually harvest organs from donors who have already died, we also harvest from living donors, but obviously this is an activity that will always be limited. We are talking, above all, about kidney donation and, in some very specific cases, liver donation,” he added.
To journalists, the government official, who is also a doctor, alluded to the possibility of increasing the harvesting of organs from patients who are in cardiorespiratory arrest.
«During a certain period of cardiorespiratory arrest, it will still be possible to harvest viable organs. This requires great sophistication in the organization of hospitals, but it also requires the adequacy of the legal framework, so that, with all ethical guarantees in relation to the people in question, it is possible to obtain these organs that can save lives», he said.
In her speech at the opening of the II National Organ Donation Days, the president of the board of directors of the Portuguese Institute of Blood and Transplantation, Maria Antónia Escoval, indicated that 966 organs were transplanted and 1.060 harvested.
«It is the best time series in relation to kidneys, in terms of deceased and living donors, lungs and pancreas», he highlighted.
According to Maria Antónia Escoval, these are preliminary data, which should be published at the end of April, beginning of May.
The II National Organ Donation Days under the theme “More Organs… more transplantation” are promoted by the Intensive Medicine Service of the Coimbra Local Health Unit (CHUC), in partnership with the CHUC Coordination and Organ Harvesting Office.
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