People who die with HIV will be able to donate organs to other patients also diagnosed with the virus. The Minister of Health, Mónica García, has advanced her intention to repeal the 1987 order that until now restricted these donations. 65 people with HIV who died in the last decade could have donated their organs, which would have allowed 165 transplants to be carried out “if there were no regulatory limitations and if there were suitable HIV recipients on the waiting list who had given their consent,” says the Ministry of Health with data from the World Transplant Organization (ONT).
This measure “seeks to eliminate restrictions on organ donation among people with HIV, equating their situation to that of other infections that do not limit donation” and responds to “a historical demand” of the group with HIV infection and professionals. who provide them with health care. “Transplant is safe among people with HIV. Let us repeal an obsolete norm without scientific basis,” García wrote in X.
The current regulations have their origins in the 1980s and 1990s, when “organ transplantation in people with HIV was considered a high-risk intervention.” However, at the beginning of the century, the introduction of antiretroviral therapy significantly improved the prognosis of patients with HIV and the scientific community began to question whether infection should continue to be an absolute impediment to transplantation. With current treatments, the virus is controlled and becomes undetectable in the blood. This also means that it cannot be transmitted.
This change in perception and medical practice was reflected in the National Consensus Document adopted in 2005 by the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC), the National Plan on AIDS and the ONT. Since then, a total of 311 kidney transplants, 510 liver, 11 lung, 10 heart and 1 pancreas-kidney transplants have been registered in Spain in patients with HIV, always following the recipient selection criteria established in said document. .
Its repeal, recalls the Ministry, “responds to a historical demand of the group with HIV infection and of the professionals who provide them with health care so that these people can contribute, if they wish, to the donation of organs for transplant.”
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