RIYADH, 16 July 2003 — In order to promote blood and organ donation, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd has awarded the King Abdul Aziz Medals to 50 donors.
Five of the donors were awarded the medal posthumously.
The move is primarily intended to encourage the public to allow harvesting of organs in the Kingdom, where more than 4,700 patients are waiting for kidney transplants.
Dr. Faisal A. Shaheen, director general of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT), said health institutions faced a shortage of donor organs especially kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs and corneas despite the 350 brain-dead cases reported annually in the Kingdom. These clinically dead people, a substantial number of whom are victims of traffic accidents, could donate their organs, he said.
More than 500 patients also need liver transplants annually.
According to Dr. Abdul Majeed, another Saudi expert, “the organs of only 28 percent of the reported cases are harvested in Saudi Arabia and only nine percent are used for liver transplants.”
Dr. Shaheen said more than 75 percent of the families of accident victims refuse to donate organs in the Kingdom.
He said the shortage of organs forced many Saudi patients to travel abroad. More than 200 Saudis travel abroad for organ transplants every year.
Five recipients of the medal are regular blood donors.
The Ministry of Health has stressed the need to take maximum precautions while donating and storing blood following findings that a substantial amount of blood donated across the country is not fit for transfusion.
