HEALTH-SERBIA & MONTENEGRO: No Heart for Organ Donation

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Mar 4 2003 (IPS) - Serbia has introduced organ donor cards, but few are lining up yet to give what they may no longer be able to use.

"It’s an absolute necessity for this country to introduce organ donations," says Dr Zoran Kovacevic from the Belgrade Military Medical Academy (VMA), the leading institution for transplants in Serbia. "Apart from Albania, we remain the only country in Europe without such practice."

At least 3,500 people live on daily dialysis and another 700 to 800 are added to this list every year. An average of 400 die of kidney failure every year.

"Many could have been saved by transplants," Dr Kovacevic told IPS. "But the practice of taking organs from dead donors is non-existent here. We rely on close relatives, but only 5 to 10 per cent of patients have a matching and healthy donor in the family."

The growing number of patients who need liver transplants has intensified the need for dealing with this problem. "This is not cosmetics, it’s a necessity," says deputy health minister Dragan Marisavljevic. "But it is still taboo."

Experts say that most people are just not comfortable with the fact that they or someone close to them may suddenly die. Doctors say they run into a wall of silence when they try to persuade the family of a brain dead patient to donate a healthy kidney, liver or heart.

"My experience shows that only one in 15 families of brain dead patients agrees to listen to me when I suggest organ donation," says a doctor from VMA. "And that one usually refuses."

Most people think death comes when the heart stops, and have no clear idea that a brain dead person with a heart beat is really dead, she says.

"There’s a lot of education that needs to be done in the field," Serbian health minister Tomica Milosavljevic said at a press conference last week. "We need to organise a broad campaign on the ultimate noble gift like organ donation. We must tell people that three lives can be saved with the organs taken from a dead person."

Milosavljevic and VMA head Prof Zoran Stankovic were the first to donate their organs in a new campaign launched last month. Their appeals on popular TV and radio shows attracted about 100 volunteers.

"We need at least a million organ donors in our central computer," says Dr Kovacevic. "That would give us a base with enough cross references for those in need."

The new health ministry campaign has not convinced most people. Reports in some tabloid newspapers have stoked fears that organ donation can turn into a murky trade with million dollar profits. "But there is absolutely no possibility of abuse of organ donations," says Dr Rajko Hrvacevic from VMA.

A recent survey by the Belgrade branch of the Martens Board International Polling Agency showed that only 28.1 per cent of Serbs would donate their organs. And few who say they are willing have actually come forward.

"By the end of the year Serbia and Montenegro will have the first law on organ and tissue donations and grafts," Dr Hrvacevic says. "We hope to join Eurotransplant, the European central institution in the field that coordinates more than 21,000 cadaveric transplants (transplant of organs taken from dead people) a year." These are expected to be reassuring steps, Dr Hrvacevic says.

Doctors fear that to top the general reluctance of people to donate organs, the conservative Serbian Orthodox Church will oppose the campaign. The senior clergy have not commented publicly on the campaign but many priests say privately that organ donation is against the teachings of the church.