The Qatar Organ Donation Centre (Hiba) aims to enrol 200,000 organ donors by the end of this year, a top official told the Qatar International Forum for Organ Donation on Sunday.
“We are getting encouraging feedback from the general public, including nationals,” explained Hiba director Dr Riadh Fadhil, while explaining that Qatari organ donors are increasing.
“If there were no Qatari organ donors in 2008-2009, now, we have a good number. This is a significant achievement. The public awareness activities that we have undertaken, are bearing fruit,” he said.
The official also highlighted the progress, the centre has made in a very short time. “While we started just five years ago, many of our neighbouring countries started some 20 years ago, but our percentage of donors, which is per one million population, is higher compared to them.”
Dr Fadhil said that the number of people going abroad for organ transplant has drastically come down. “The last one who went to China for liver transplant was in 2013. This is the case for other transplants too.”
So far this year, 65,685 have enrolled for the organ donation programme. More than 44,000 new organ donors signed up in the organ donation campaign during Ramadan this year. As per the latest figures shown at the forum on Sunday, the total number of donors has already crossed 163,000.
The growth of the registry is unprecedented in the region, according to the official and he attributed the success to the extensive educational efforts by the centre and the support extended by the leadership.