VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam is in dire need of organ donors, with 16,000 people in need of transplants every day, but religious beliefs or ignorance may be preventing people from putting themselves on donor lists or volunteering to become donors after death.

A patient suffering from kidney failure at Phuc An Khang Hospital in HCM City

Technological and medical advances have made transplanting the organs of one compatible person into another almost routine, and laws have been in place since 2006 to protect and respect donors and recipients.

But only a small number of those in need of transplants get them because of the shortage of donor organs, which can range from kidneys, livers and hearts, to corneas and lungs.

In cases of kidney or liver transplants, for instance, the donor is usually a compatible relative. Transplant of organs to strangers from donors certified as brain-dead are quite rare -- only 28 cases have been reported.

In many developed countries, people can declare themselves on their driving licenses they are willing to be donors in the event of a fatal accident, and hospitals maintain meticulous records of those in need of transplants so matches can be made within hours while the organs of the deceased are still viable. One dead donor can same many lives.

Du Thi Ngoc Thu, from Cho Ray Hospital in HCM City, said that there are 8,000 people suffering from kidney failure, 6,000 are blind due to corneal problems, 1,500 people are struggling with liver failure and hundreds of people are waiting for other organ transplants.

Many experts fear the lack of supply of voluntary donors serves to encourage internationally illegal organ trafficking.

Nguyen Hoang Phuc, vice director of the National Centre for Co-ordinating Human Organ Transplants, said people are reluctant to agree to organ donations because they want their bodies to remain intact after death, and children do not want the organs of a dead parent removed because they don't want to violate their bodies.

Phuc said low awareness about how many people's lives can be saved through organ donation, and misunderstandings about what constitutes brain death -- that is, a person may continue to breath and their heart pump, even through their brains have irrevocably ceased to function -- prevent people from agreeing to giving organs.

Tran Ngoc Sinh, head of the Urology and Nephrology Association, said the best sources of organs are live donors -- who can live on one kidney with medication or donate part of their liver, which is the only organ of the body that can regrow -- or brain-dead donors and heart-dead donors.

"Since the sources from live donors and brain-dead donors are scarce, we should consider encouraging donations from heart-dead donors," he said, "This is time when people need to think differently. If the life-saving benefits of organ donation were to be taught in school now, we could meet two-thirds of demand in a matter of decades."

DTriNews