Organ donation from deceased people has been at a standstill in Venezuela for five years, during which 1,200 people failed to receive a transplant, according to calculations by the National Transplant Organization (ONTV).
This independent organization makes the estimate considering that, in years like 2012 and 2013, when the Organ and Tissue Procurement System (Spot) was operating and under the supervision of the ONTV, about 400 transplants were performed annually between deceased and living donors for alive.
However, in 2014, the State handed over everything related to Spot to an institution dependent on the Ministry of Health called Fundavene, which in June 2017 announced a temporary suspension that today, five years later, remains in effect.
The person in charge of Institutional Relations at ONTV, Lucila Cárdenas, denounced that this paralysis prevents patients from opting for donation and that it also makes it impossible to help voluntary donors.
“There are many lives that have been lost, statistically speaking (…) it can be said that there are approximately between 1,100 and 1,200 people who could have benefited from an organ transplant that did not take place, and of these 10% would be children”, he lamented. Cardenas.
indefinite suspension
The suspension of Spot was attributed to the lack of inducing and immunosuppressive drugs that transplanted patients must receive in order not to reject the graft.
However, ONTV representatives insist that both the scarcity of these drugs and the state of deterioration of the public health system are conditions that converge to the impossibility of performing this procedure today, except in patients who find a donor among their families and have the resources to pay the operation in a private center.
“Right now, in Venezuela there are approximately 8,000 people on dialysis; of these 8,000, 40% could qualify for a transplant and 10% are ready to undergo such a transplant. But at the moment in Venezuela, only living-to-living transplants are performed.” , explained Cardenas.
The ONTV official clarified that these interventions are carried out only in private clinics and “at a cost that leaves out 98% of Venezuelans who need a transplant.”
Among the consequences of Spot’s paralysis, Cárdenas highlighted that, in 2021, 14 children died waiting for a kidney in the Nephrology Unit of the main pediatric hospital in Caracas, and that this year there have already been six deaths.
A spokeswoman for Fundavene said by phone that she could not provide information about Spot, but that “transplants have already started.”
However, in the last post on its Instagram account on April 2, the organization stated, “We are continuing to work to activate the Organ, Tissue and Cell Search System.”
Hope that comes and goes
Yohana Bonilla is 44 years old and more than 11 of them have kidney failure. In that period, she received two unsuccessful transplants, the last one after benefiting from Spot in 2013.
“I was selected two years after being included on the list. They called me one morning to have the transplant and they transplanted me again (…) and it was very exciting because you have the hope that they will call you at any time and It was random,” he said.
Bonilla, however, suffered complications and lost her new kidney. Now she has no other donor and cannot wait for a volunteer because the search system is closed, so she can only continue the hemodialysis treatment that keeps her alive.
In Venezuela, hope is only possible for patients who need a kidney or liver transplant and who find this donation in a family member, since the rest of Organs transplantable organs can only be obtained from deceased donors.
This is the case with Eugenio Martínez, who was lucky enough to be compatible with his mother, Beatriz del Gallego, and together they overcame the obstacle course that this process represents.
“It’s very hard, it’s very difficult, you have to live to see how difficult it is for the people who are in this process (…) It’s a blessing, especially in this country where things are so complex,” said Martínez.
This family had to raise funds to pay for the surgical intervention, carried out in 2016, since it was impossible to carry out the transplant in the public network.
Despite everything, they see the medical procedure as a successful test with which they hope to give hope to other chronic patients who live against the clock and await a transplant that never comes.
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