The Director General of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, Dr. Faisal Abdul Rahim Shaheen, in an interview published in the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan yesterday, expected an increase in the number of donors this year, which opens the doors of hope for 10 thousand patients with final organic failure in the Kingdom.
Shaheen explained that the organ transplant program received the approval of 10 donors last April in the Riyadh region, while the number of donors in the same month last year did not exceed one donor only.
He pointed out that kidney transplants increased significantly in Saudi Arabia in 2007 after the launch of the National Center for Kidneys, noting that the number of kidney transplantation cases from living donors since the beginning of the program until the end of 2007 reached 3572 cases, while the number of brain dead reached 1794.
With regard to liver transplantation, Shaheen mentioned that he had transplanted 622 of them in the Kingdom until the end of 2007, of which 189 were transplanted to children from living donors at the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh, while this year 39 livers were transplanted from neighborhood relatives and 54 were brain dead.
As for the hearts, it reached 12 full hearts, while the number of those used as a source for human valves reached 31 hearts.
