Almost 1,000 people register to donate organs

Scene at the health festival (Photo: dantri.vn)

Nam Dinh (VNA) – Nearly 1,000 people registered to donate their tissue and organs
at a health festival that took place in the northern province of Nam Dinh on
November 17.

Jointly organised
by the Nam Dinh University of Nursing, National Coordination Centre for Organ Transplantation,
and Vietnam Red Cross Society’s Central Committee, among others, the event
attracted more than 5,000 students from universities and colleges in the province.

Addressing the
festival, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Viet Tien said the supply of tissue
and organs is still far below demand in Vietnam, with over 10,000 organ failure
patients waiting for donors.

Donating tissue
and organs, particularly from brain-dead people, is a humanitarian action that
needs to be promoted, he added.

Vice President
of the Vietnam Red Cross Society Central Committee Tran Quoc Hung said anyone
can take part in the activity, and the promotion of tissue and organ donation
among youths is important to patients and the health sector.

Vietnam passed a
law relating to organ donation in 2006. However, the number of clinically-dead
patients whose organs have been donated is extremely low. Statistics in 2016
showed that about 99.4 percent of the organ transplants in Vietnam were done
with organs donated by living people, while the remaining 0.6 percent was
conducted with organs donated by brain-dead people.

The first organ
transplant involving a brain-dead donor was conducted at Cho Ray Hospital in
HCM City in 2010. Since then, similar surgeries have been carried out at Viet
Duc Hospital, Military Medical Academy and Hue Central Hospital. -VNA