Surgery unit calls for donor law

The country’s first dedicated transplant unit opened in Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in February, allowing the complex surgery to be carried out by locally based doctors for the first time.

However, in order to carry out a wide range of transplants, the centre requires a steady supply of organs and doctors say a change in the law is needed to allow them to harvest livers, hearts and other organs from patients declared brain-dead.

They are also calling for a donor registration scheme, under which people prepared to donate organs in the event of their death would carry a donor card. In cases where no card was carried, the decision would be left to the patient’s next of kin.

The centre, which is managed by the US-based Cleveland Clinic, has so far carried out four kidney transplants and is preparing to perform its first liver transplant early next year. Within the coming year, the centre will diversify further to include pancreas and heart operations and eventually hopes to establish a multi-organ transplant programme.

Dr Abrar Khan, the chairman of the transplant programme, is now in discussions with the Abu Dhabi Health Authority about the possibility of legislation known as the “Brain-death law”, to increase the number of patients whose lives can be saved by transplants.

Such legislation is in effect in all GCC countries except the UAE and in countries around the world including the UK, US and Canada.

In Saudi Arabia, a decree allowing the use of organs from brain-dead patients was issued in 1982, and 85 per cent of transplants in the GCC are carried out in the kingdom. Between 1982 and 2007, there were 5,366 kidney transplants, with organs taken from brain-dead donors in 1,794 cases.

Death, said Dr Khan, could be defined in two ways. “Either your heart stops and you stop breathing or the other way is if you are brain-dead, in which case, your heart is still functioning, but your brain isn’t.”