Each day, 10 European citizens die while waiting for a suitable organ transplant. That’s almost 4,000 people on a yearly basis. Moira Mizzi delves deeper into the subject.

Christmas is the time for giving as the popular saying goes, even if for most it is either laced with heavy undertones of receiving back or comes in the way of a quick donation over the phone during a variety show.

For some, however, it spells giving up a lot of their quality time and energy just to make others happy and to give them something which is drastically missing from their daily lives. For others still it involves actually transcending every imaginable limit and giving a part of themselves.

On New Year’s Day, at Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin, a 10-year-old girl literally gave her heart to Gabriele, a 21-month-old baby whose days were counted in grains of sand in a miniscule hourglass due to a serious congenital heart condition. The girl had died in a traffic accident on Christmas Day and her parents, despite their grief at losing their only daughter on a day of worldwide celebrations, donated her heart and a new life to little Gabriele.

A few weeks later, the heart­broken parents of Luke, a 17-year-old lad who lost his life in a traffic accident donated his organs for transplantation, thus renewing the life contract to some six individuals.

The therapeutic use of human substances, including the donation and transplantation of organs is the process by which one healthy person donates an organ to another, usually a terminally ill individual, thus giving him or her another opportunity to live a healthy life again. The donors could be “live”, either members of the same family as the recipient or complete strangers, or “cadaver” donors; the latter are usually victims of some accident on the roads or at the workplace.

In each case matching is important, starting with blood grouping (ABO) compatibility for all organs and HLA (tissue typing) for the kidneys. This matching is important to increase the chances of success and thus reduce the risk of rejection. The size of the organ can become an issue with heart transplantation.

Organ transplantation has been successful in treating serious health conditions since 1954; in fact, it is now the most cost-effective treatment for end-stage renal failure and the only available treatment for end stage failure of organs such as the heart, lungs and liver. It is due to this success that the demand for organs continues to exceed the number of donors at an accelerating rate. This state of affairs has led to a lot of abuse to the extent that in some underdeveloped countries people actually sell their organs in return for some badly needed cash resulting in unsafe practices in some areas of the world.

For this reason, in July 2010, the European Parliament and the European Council adopted a directive on standards of quality and safety of human organs intended for transplantation to ensure that the organs are procured, transported and used in standard and safe procedures to avoid the transmission of disease to individuals who are already in a highly vulnerable state because of their serious chronic conditions. In parallel, the Commission launched an action plan designed to promote the availability of deceased and living donors across the European Union, increase the supply of organs, enhance transplantation systems and ensure the quality and safety of procedures.

The action plan includes a number of priorities including the improvement of knowledge and communication regarding organ donation and transplantation issues, both among health professionals and the general public.

At present there are over 56,000 patients waiting for a transplant in the Eurpean Union, most of them being chronic kidney failure patients; of these 5,500 die while waiting for an adequate donor.

Looking at these figures the cry for help to donate as many organs as possible cannot be piercing enough and the benefits of international cooperation entities, like Eurotransplant, which prevent organ loss, address the needs of special patient groups and improving the outcome of organ transplantation cannot be commended enough.

For those lucky individuals who do get a transplant, which are a meagre 1,000 per year for kidney disease, the survival rate soars to a staggering 93 per cent in the first year following treatment. Liver transplanted individuals fare the best in the rest of the transplanted individuals with a Quality Adjusted Life Year gain of 11.5 when compared with heart with a 6.8 Qaly gain and lung with a 5.2 Qaly gain.

Our island has some encouraging figures to share with its European counterparts. The rate of deceased organ donations locally is 22.5 per million against a European average of 18. In the June 2010 Eurobarometer survey the Maltese population showed a high despondency (77 per cent) to donate their own organs and an unusually high level of consent to organ donation (72 per cent), making us a beacon in the southern part of Europe. Of the relatively low proportion of people who do not support organ donation, the majority claim the usual local deflection of “ma nafx”.

In Malta, only the heart and kidney transplants are performed locally together with corneal transplants which are considered as tissue transplantation. On average nine kidney transplants and one heart transplant are done in a year which is something to write home about considering that the donor pool is so meagre. All other organs, donated, mainly livers, are usually sent abroad, particularly in Italy as locally we do not have a liver transplant programme. In fact, all Maltese patients requiring a liver are sent to the United Kingdom for treatment.

Patients undergoing transplantations and their families can also count on the support of a patient group headed by James Muscat (www.transplantsupport.com.mt). Seven years ago, Mr Muscat did the indescribably beautiful gesture of donating a kidney to his brother-in-law Dave who had been on dialysis due to end stage renal failure, making it the first unrelated kid-ney transplantation to be done locally.

“Giving something to somebody and expecting nothing in return is an experience that unites people in a very special way”, he explains. “When people ask me why I did it, the answer is very simple: I say I did it out of love; to give from within and to share makes me the happiest guy on this planet,” he concludes, his voice thick with emotion.

There are no words to describe what it must be like to lose someone near and dear, especially if unexpectedly and at a relatively young age. And yet, many families have gone through this harrowing experience and were faced with the unfathomable pain of having to let go of their loved one.

In the midst of all this tragedy, many have still found the energy to think of others in need and to donate something so precious to them, to give a new life and prevent yet another family from losing their loved one. Ironically, in this great and selfless act of love, many of these families have found peace and healing.

In honour of these families and all the living donors who, like Mr Muscat, actually sacrified a part of themselves in life to save that of others, it would be wise if we all can start, from now, to think of the life we could leave behind when the bell decides to toll for us too.

Likewise, we would also be taking the decision ourselves thus making it easier for our loved ones but also leaving behind a legacy of true love, selflessness and hope.

As Mr Muscat says: “Life is beautiful. It is much more meaningful when we share and give; it unites us all in a very unique way”.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.