Madrid (EFE).- Spain remained the world leader in organ donation activity in 2022, when it contributed one in four deceased donors from the European Union (EU) and 5% globally, and was the second in number of transplants performed, second only to the United States.
This is confirmed by the latest report from the World Donation and Transplant Observatory, which for 17 years has been managed by the National Transplant Organization (ONT) as a collaborating center of the World Health Organization (WHO) and whose data is published annually in the Newsletter Transplant of the Council of Europe.
According to its latest data, with information from 91 countries, last year 157,540 organ transplants were performed, of which 102,090 were kidney (39% of which were from living donors), 37,482 liver (24% from alive), 8,988 heart, 6,784 lung, 2,026 pancreas and 170 intestine.
In this way, global transplant activity grew by 9% in one year, which reflects, according to the ONT, the significant effort made by many countries to recover these programs after the impact of the pandemic.
Increase in kidney transplantation
The increase in kidney transplants (10%) stands out especially, followed by liver (8%), heart (7%) and lung (5%).
In this context, and despite representing 11% of the European population and 0.6% of the world population, the report shows that 24% of organ donations in the EU and 5% of global ones came from Spain .
With a rate of 47 donors per million population (pmp), Spain remains the country with the highest donation activity globally, followed by the United States, with 44.5 donors pmp in terms of transplantation activity, and Regarding transplants, Spain reached a rate of 115.3 pmp, a figure only surpassed by the United States (130.7).
Likewise, Spain was the leader in donation in asystole or cardiac arrest, which is only carried out in 23 countries in the world and which last year increased by 12% compared to 2021 and contributed half of the donors in asystole in the whole of the EU and the 10% of the world.
At the EU level, donation activity was up 7% and transplant activity up 6% thanks to the generosity of 9,305 donors.
However, in the European territory ten patients died every day while waiting for an organ.
