World Organ Donation Day is celebrated every year on August 13. The day is celebrated to raise awareness about the importance of organ donation and motivate people to donate organs after death. The day provides an opportunity to all to come ahead and pledge to donate their precious organs because one organ donor can save up to eight lives.
Organ donation is retrieving a donor’s organ like heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, and pancreas after the donor is deceased and then transplanting into another person who is in need of an organ.

The European Organ Donation and Transplantation Day is celebrated annually on the second Saturday of October. The hashtag is #EODD. The event is held to raise awareness of the importance of organ, tissue and cell donation as a way to improve and save lives.

Donation and transplantation in Ukraine

Donation and transplantation in Ukraine is still developing. Every year, even every month, our doctors perform more and more life-saving transplants. Transplantation of each organ requires great skill, competence and practice. More and more hospitals are getting licenses for transplants.

The following types of transplantation are distinguished:

• Autotransplantation (from the Greek αυτος — self), or autologous transplantation — the recipient of the transplant is the donor himself. For example, skin autotransplantation from undamaged areas to burned areas is widely used in severe burns. Autotransplantation of bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cells after high-dose antitumor chemotherapy is widely used in leukemias, lymphomas, and chemosensitive malignant tumors.
• Allotransplantation (from the Greek άλλος — another), or heterologous transplantation — the transplant donor is an organism of the same species, genetically and immunologically different from the recipient.
• Xenotransplantation (from the Greek ξενος – foreign), or interspecies transplantation – transplantation of material from another biological species (for example, to a person from an animal).

Currently, there are two legally regulated types of donation in Ukraine:

• living donation, when the organ donor is a living person. In this case, only a relative of the patient can be a donor.
• posthumous donation, when the organ donor is a deceased person (a person diagnosed with brain death).

Selection of the Donor-Recipient pair during transplantation of an organ removed from a posthumous donor is carried out through EDIST in automatic mode.

EDIST, or the Unified State Information System of Organs and Tissues Transplantation, is a single information space for setting up a new transplantation system.

The selection of a Donor-Recipient pair in case of living family donation is not necessary, but It is determined by medical indications (immunological matching and medical condition of the donor).

Post-transplant care

Patients after transplantation must be under the care (accompaniment) of the appropriate specialist. This support includes a doctor’s examination, clinical and laboratory studies (general blood test, general urinalysis, blood biochemistry, etc.), as well as determination and correction of immunosuppressive therapy.

Immunosuppressive therapy is one of the key factors for successful transplantation and subsequent patient health. It involves treatment with special drugs: Tacrolimus and Cyclosporine. Transplant patients will receive appropriate drugs free of charge at the expense of the State Budget of Ukraine or local budgets.

Data on immunosuppressive therapy are stored in EDIST for the purpose of forecasting their supply, and in the future for the transition to the reimbursement system under the “Affordable Medicines” program.

For information:

On April 3, 1933 the Ukrainian surgeon Yu. Yu. Voronyi, working in Kherson, performed the first clinical transplant of a cadaver kidney in the world, the report of which was published in the Italian journal “Vinerva Chirurgica”, in which it was noted that the kidney was included in the blood circulation and started on its own to function, gave the first urine. This kidney transplant was the first ever attempt to transplant any whole organ into a human.