The Director made the proposal at yesterday’s workshop on donating tissues and organs from people with cardiac death in Vietnam organized by the National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation.
The workshop was held to seek opinions from scientists and experts to propose additional cardiac death and donating organ tissue from people with cardiac death which should be included in the future’s amended Law on Organ Tissue Transplantation.
At the conference, Associate Professor-Dr. Dong Van He, Director of the National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation cum Deputy Director of Viet Duc University Hospital, said that two sources of donated organs include heart-dead and brain-dead donors for organ transplantation in the world. Currently, in Vietnam's legal documents, regulations are guiding the diagnosis of brain death and tissue and organ donation from brain-dead people.
The 2006 Law on Organ Tissue Transplantation only mentions tissue and organ donation from brain-dead people without mentioning organ tissue donation from heart-dead people. Meanwhile, over the past 10 years, organ donations from people with cardiac death have caught on many countries and the use of organs from heart-dead donors for transplants has been increasing in the world. Furthermore, many Vietnamese people died of cardiac diseases who are ideal donors for organ transplants.
Therefore, if multiple organ donation is accepted by the law, the source of organ donations will be expanded, helping patients with tissue and organ failure have more hope of overcoming a serious illness and increasing the rate of tissue and organ donations after brain death and heart death across the country in the coming time, said Associate Professor-Dr. Dong Van He.
He added that after a few hours of heart death, experts will still resuscitate the lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas, cornea, skin, bones, and blood vessels, so the source of donated organs from circulatory death could make more organs available for patients in need.
