At the conference summarizing the network of organ and tissue donation from brain-dead people in 2024 and development orientation for 2025, organized by the National Organ Transplant Coordination Center on January 7, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan said: More than 30 years of performing organ transplants, with the first kidney transplant in June 1992. By the end of 2024, Vietnam had performed 9,516 cases nationwide with the participation of 27 hospitals and centers. In the past 3 years, Vietnam has successfully performed about 1,000 organ transplants each year, the highest in Southeast Asia.
In response to the Prime Minister's call, with the spirit of "Opening the heart of compassion - Spreading love - Lighting up faith - Continuing hope - Sowing seeds of life" because "Giving is forever", in 2024, dozens of associations promoting human tissue and organ donation were established, not only in public medical facilities but also in private medical facilities participating very strongly.
The number of people registering to donate organs and tissues after death is many times higher than the total number of people registering in previous years. The actual number recorded in 2024, the number of patients donating organs after death is 41 cases, this is a record number in Vietnam up to the present time.
Also in 2024, the organ transplant industry made a strong impression when it was honored as one of the typical events of Vietnamese medicine. Vietnam successfully performed the first simultaneous heart-liver transplant in Vietnam and performed a trachea transplant from a brain-dead donor, a rare technique not only in Vietnam but also in the world; 3 lung transplants in 2024 alone, bringing the total number of lung transplants to 12 since the first one was performed in 2017.
"However, that still does not meet the people's need for organ transplants. The rate of 94% of transplanted organs from living donors is too high and the rate of registration for organ donation from brain-dead people in Vietnam is very low," Deputy Minister Tran Van Thuan worried.
There is still no mechanism or policy for consulting activities on organ donation from brain-dead and heart-dead people.Nationwide, only a few hospitals have established consulting and organ donation teams, due to the lack of truly suitable treatment policies and regimes.
In addition, the costs for resuscitation, brain-dead diagnosis, tissue and organ retrieval, preservation, coordination, and transportation; and the costs for performing technical services related to organ transplantation have not been uniformly established, causing many difficulties for hospitals in paying these costs, especially hospitals involved in the organ retrieval process.
The Ministry of Health has been gradually perfecting the system of mechanisms and policies to promote the strong and sustainable development of organ donation, retrieval and transplantation. The first step is to update and perfect technical and professional guidelines, thereby providing economic and technical norms, building a price that is calculated correctly, fully, covers all constituent costs, and aims for health insurance payment.
