According to the association France Transplant, the number of transplants would be dramatically decreasing in France, and this has consequences: between 500 and 800 patients die each year, for lack of having been able to benefit from an organ donation.
In a survey released on January 14, France Transplant Association is sounding the alarm: according to her, the number of organ transplants is in sharp decline in France, increasing the risks for patients awaiting a transplant.
According to the association, which is based on figures from the Biomedicine Agency (ABM), fewer than 5,805 transplants were performed in 2018, including 561 from living donors, 24,000 patients are still waiting for an organ transplant and between 500 and 800 would die each year because they were not able to benefit from it in time. “In addition to these deaths, a significant number of patients are removed from waiting lists, because over time the condition of patients has deteriorated, they are no longer operable”, warns Jean-Louis Touraine. , president of France Transplant in an interview with World.
“We are worried, the number of patients waiting for a transplant continues to grow, and the number of transplants is no longer increasing,” he adds.
A shortage of organ donations
How can this decrease in transplants performed in France in recent years be explained? France Transplant gives several reasons. First, the insufficient number of organs collected. Even if the law provides for declaring as consenting to organ donation any person who has not clearly expressed their refusal, “there has been a drift”, considers Jean-Louis Touraine on France info. “Instead of asking the family: was the person for or against, we ask the family: are you for or against. And among the 5 or 6 members of the family who are here, around the person who has just died, there is always one who has moods. Therefore, the collection is not done and that explains why, today, there are 50% or more refusal rates.”
Too few financial and human resources
The president of France Transplant also points to the lack of financial resources and staffing of doctors, surgeons and anesthesiologists-resuscitators to properly carry out transplants. “There may also be a lack of organisation, with sometimes the impossibility of accessing the operator unit”, adds Jean-Louis Touraine.
He assures that “the transplant does not require additional financial means, it saves additional money. (…) each kidney transplant that is performed saves money because dialysis is much more expensive than transplantation.”
While the Transplant Plan has set the objective of achieving 7,800 transplants by 2021, France Transplant ensures that this remains, to date, “more than ambitious” in view of the human and financial resources deployed to ensure transplants. The association gives a few ways to increase transplant procedures: better train teams to welcome and inform donor families and, above all, promote transplants from voluntary living donors.
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-1730888646.jpg "Kidney donation while alive: “It was an act of love that I did for my sister”")
