Health Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Tien gives organ tissue donation cards to registered donors (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – The lack of knowledge about organ donation is one of
the main reasons leading to the shortage of organ donation sources, according
to medical experts.
Public awareness of
organ donation remained limited, even amongst medical workers, said Deputy
Director of the National Co-ordination Centre for Organ Transplant Dong Van He.
A survey on medical
workers’ knowledge about brain-dead patients carried out in 2015 at some
hospitals in the northern mountainous localities found that more than 70 per
cent of medical workers said brain-dead patients could recover.
Particularly, 44 per
cent of students of the Hanoi Medical University also said that brain-dead
patients could be saved.
This misunderstanding of
brain-dead patients would have a great impact on encouraging and raising public
awareness of organ donation from brain-dead patients, He told Suc khoe
va Doi song (Health and Life) Newspaper.
“Brain-dead patients
cannot be saved,” he said.
The Ministry of Health
recently held a media campaign to raise awareness amongst both people and
medical workers about organ donation, stating that donations from brain-dead
patients are a valuable source.
Doctor Ly Van Lien from
Bao Yen Hospital in the northern mountainous province of Lao Cai said he
himself was not well aware of organ donation and brain-death.
“After attending the
campaign ceremony, I was updated with a lot of knowledge. I will register to
donate organs after death. In the worst case, a part of my body could help save
others. This is the most meaningful thing that I can feel,” he told the
newspaper.
“I am from Dao ethnic
group and people in my locality are very afraid of donating organs. Now I
understand and will explain and encourage people in my locality to register to
donate their organs after death,” he said.
donation from a
brain-dead patient could save the lives of many people who need organ
transplants and in many cases, organ transplant was the only cure, according to
He.
Paradoxically, the
number of brain-dead patients due to traffic accidents amounted to tens of
thousands each year but the number of donors was limited, he said.
The Hanoi-based Viet Duc
(Vietnam-Germany) Hospital, one of the 17 facilities qualified to perform
transplants, reported around 1,000 brain dead patients every year. However,
only 26 donated their organs between 2011 and 2015.
If one person agrees to
donate his or her organs, four or five lives can be saved. However, few
families of brain-dead individuals agree to make the donation, often for
spiritual reasons.
Organ donation is an
urgent need to meet increasing demand in the current context. Over 16,000
patients suffer from heart, kidney, liver and lung diseases and more than 6,000
blind people await , according to the .
Doctors here have
conducted 1,281 kidney transplants, 54 liver transplants, 16
and eight bone marrow transplants since 1992, according to the latest
figures.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
