Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Costa Rica National Transplant Program is Failing

The national transplant program has been failing in so many ways. One of the results of these failures is that the number of people waiting for organs has doubled in just three years.

In 2016, 188 people were on the waiting list for a kidney and 27 for a liver. Today those figures are at 341 and 42, respectively. Patients are waiting years and many die waiting, leaving behind families who question why so many organs are going to waste.

In 2018, 60% of cadaveric donors were wasted. 45% of these cases were due to non-conformation of surgical teams, at least in part because they were on voluntary alert and not paid. There were 140 organs available and at least 126 were in usable condition yet only 78 of these were transplanted.

Now that surgical teams are again being paid there should be less waste. Another goal is to triple the rate of cadaveric donors which is currently at 7 donors per million inhabitants.

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