Organ transplant is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. over 4,500 organ transplant surgeries were conducted during the last fiscal year that ended on March 20.
Around 2,500 kidney, 802 liver, 119 heart, 30 pancreas and several intestine and lung as well as 1,040 bone marrow transplants were performed in Iran during the period, said Seyyed Mohammad Kazemeini, head of the Organ Transplant Management Office at the Health Ministry.
“This impressive number of transplant surgeries has helped save many lives.
Last year a team of experts from Mashhad, capital of the northeastern Khorasan Razavi Province, carried out 47 renal transplants in Afghanistan, and medical teams from Shiraz, capital of the southwest Fars Province, conducted 20 operations in Pakistan and Tajikistan.
There are currently 46 organ transplant centers in the country.
Kazemeini had earlier pointed to Iran’s top position in the field of kidney transplant in the Middle East. On average, 3,000 kidney transplants are conducted every year and Iranian surgeons have transplanted over 35,000 kidneys so far.
According to global statistics, Spain has the highest rate of organ donation in the world with 36 per million people.
Organ transplant for foreigners
foreigners were not allowed to receive a kidney from Iranian donors or donate a kidney to Iranian patients; however, they could be transplanted from donors of their own nationality, after full medical workup, with the authorization of the Ministry of Health. This considered as a humanitarian assistance to patients of the countries with no transplant program and limited and low quality dialysis.