News » Vietnam
Hospital reports record organ donations
  • | nld, dtinews.vn | June 21, 2018 06:01 AM
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The Vietnam-Germany Friendship Hospital received donated organs from four brain-dead patients to save 16 people in the space of a month.


 

Patient recovers after the transplantation

Head of the hospital, Tran Binh Giang, said on June 20 that there were four patients suffering from heart failure, four with liver failure and eight with kidney failure. Two hearts have been transferred to Hue Central Hospital for patients who are compatible with the organs. Most of the patients recovered and were discharged.

According to Giang, there were previously only one to two donations each year. The increasing number of donors means a changing perspective on organ donation.

“Many people are starting to realise that donating organs is a sharing and a humanitarian gesture,” he said.

Dr Nguyen Quang Nghia, director of the hospital’s Human Organ Transplantation Centre, said three out of four patients with liver failure had been in critical condition and might have died at any point. They have recovered well. He went on to praised the doctors’ skills which were backed by high survival rates in Vietnam. The five-year survival rate is 78% and the 10-year rate is 68%.

Even though the doctors have good skills, they have to deal with the stigma of organ donation in Vietnam.

Four to six people died at Vietnam-Germany Friendship Hospital every day from traffic accidents but only 40 brain-dead people donated organs in the past decade. If a patient is willing to make organ donation before being brain dead, they can give away their liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, corneas, tendons and muscle.

Giang said, “Living people can also donate livers and kidneys but we don’t encourage such practice. A patient who is brain dead cannot recover and the process to determine a brain-dead patient in Vietnam is stricter than many countries.”

Statistics from Vietnam National Coordinating Centre for Human Organ Transplantation show that 251 people registered to donate organs early this year after 7-year-old Nguyen Hai An donated her corneas to two patients.

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