TEHRAN – Iran is ranked first for organ donation among Asian countries, Mehdi Shadnoush, head of the Health Ministry's center for transplantation and disease management, has announced.

“The country’s organ donation rate is 14.34 per 1 million people,” he noted.

The occupied Palestinian territories that claim to have the most advanced scientific and technical facilities are at the second place with 10.8 donors per a million population, he explained.

He went on to say that South Korea ranks third in Asia with a rate of 8.68 per million population.

Turkey, Kuwait, China, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Qatar also rank fourth to tenth, respectively, he stated.

Iran is a leading country in saving the lives of patients needing organ transplants, he highlighted.

In February 2019, Shadnoush said that the organ donation rate has increased by 60 times over the past 18 years. Although Iran ranks 26 in organ donation in the world, it can claim better ranks given some plans being implemented in this regard.

Organ donation of brain death has reached up to 60 percent, he said, lamenting that the country ranks 21st regarding organ donation from brain dead patients in the world while ranking 14th regarding organ transplant from alive patients.

According to the figures revealed by the International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation (IRODaT), Spain leads the world in organ donation.

Some 8,000 people die of brain death annually in Iran, out of 4,000 brain deaths being qualified to be organ donors, only 1,000 donate their organs.

Some 25,000 people are waiting in transplant lists and every day some 7 to 10 people waiting for an organ lose their lives.

10 percent of Iranians amounting to 8.2 million have organ donor cards.

FB/MG