Scene at the health festival (Photo: dantri.vn) Nam Dinh (VNA) – Nearly 1,000 people registered to donate their tissue and organs at a health festival that took place in the northern province of Nam Dinh on November 17.
Jointly organised by the Nam Dinh University of Nursing, National Coordination Centre for Organ Transplantation, and Vietnam Red Cross Society’s Central Committee, among others, the event attracted more than 5,000 students from universities and colleges in the province.
Addressing the festival, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Viet Tien said the supply of tissue and organs is still far below demand in Vietnam, with over 10,000 organ failure patients waiting for donors.
Donating tissue and organs, particularly from brain-dead people, is a humanitarian action that needs to be promoted, he added.
Vice President of the Vietnam Red Cross Society Central Committee Tran Quoc Hung said anyone can take part in the activity, and the promotion of tissue and organ donation among youths is important to patients and the health sector.
Vietnam passed a law relating to organ donation in 2006. However, the number of clinically-dead patients whose organs have been donated is extremely low. Statistics in 2016 showed that about 99.4 percent of the organ transplants in Vietnam were done with organs donated by living people, while the remaining 0.6 percent was conducted with organs donated by brain-dead people.
The first organ transplant involving a brain-dead donor was conducted at Cho Ray Hospital in HCM City in 2010. Since then, similar surgeries have been carried out at Viet Duc Hospital, Military Medical Academy and Hue Central Hospital. -VNA
VNA
