Ah, Spain. It’s a land of beautiful countryside, colorful history, wonderful food and wine and cutting edge organ and limb transplantations.
Transplantations?
Yes, that’s right. Spain is a world leader, if not the world leader, in transplantations. In fact, the country has been recognized by groups such as the Red Cross, the European Union and the World Health Organization for its outstanding efforts in transplantation of organs, tissues and cells. Organizations like these have called for other countries to follow the “Spanish model” of promoting and coordinating transplants.
How did Spain rise to such an enviable position of leadership in transplantation in the world community?
It started in the year 1980 with the founding of the ONT, or the National Transplantation Organization (Organizacion Nacional de Transplantes) under the Spanish Ministry of Health. Its goal is to maximize the number of transplants possible for Spanish citizens regardless of race, religion or socioeconomic situation. With cooperation, efficacy and solidarity as guiding principles, the ONT works to coordinate donation, extraction, preservation, distribution, exchange and transplantation of organs and tissues.
The success of the ONT has been remarkable. Since its founding, the rate of transplantation in Spain has increased 280 percent. Even more impressive, Spain now leads the world in overall transplant rate: 34.4 per million people. More than 4,000 transplant operations were conducted in Spain in 2009, almost twice that of any other European nation, and Spain has the lowest family refusal rate of any country in the world.
The global community is taking notice. Earlier this summer, along with a Canadian organization called The Transplantation Society, the ONT shared the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation—an honor sometimes referred to as the Ibero-American version of the Nobel Prizes. In honoring the ONT, the award jury praised Spain’s pioneering work at home and ongoing efforts to spread its success around the world, including the creation of the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation (with the World Health Organization) and programs for training transplantation coordinators across Latin America.
Another reason for Spain’s global leadership position in transplantation is one of the leaders in this remarkable medical movement: microsurgeon Dr. Pedro Cavadas. This unassuming professional works surgical miracles for people needing replacement tissues, organs and limbs. These are often patients who are rejected by other hospitals, and even charity cases Cavadas and his foundation fly in from remote corners of the world. The surgeon is a pioneer in transplantation—in 2006 he performed the world’s first full hand transplant.
He’ll have the chance to achieve a milestone again later this year, as the ONT recently granted Cavadas permission to conduct the first upper leg transplant on a car accident patient. There’s an ongoing search for an appropriate donor.
Cavadas seems to embody the values and goals of the ONT itself. Quoted in an article on August 8th in the New Zealand Herald, he said, “We're going to be the first because nobody else out there is researching this field. But it really doesn't matter who does the operation, me or another surgeon. The important thing is that it gets done.”
Reacting to the news that his organization had been honored with the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, head of the ONT Dr. Rafael Matesanz noted that while about a million people across the globe could benefit from a transplant each year, only around 100,000 actually get the chance to do so because of the lack of available organs and transplant infrastructure.
Spain is doing more than its part to address the situation. Where's the rest of the world?
Resources:
http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=358769&CategoryId=1300
http://www.fpa.es/en/awards/2010/the-transplantation-society-and-the-spanish-national-transplant-organization/text/
(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=