Vietnam Has World's Lowest Brain Death and Organ Donation Rate

Vietnam, with a population of approximately 100 million, reported only about ten cases of brain death and organ donation per year, equivalent to a rate of 0.1 per million people, the lowest in the world, said Professor Dr. Dong Van He, director of the National Coordination Center for Organ Transplantation.

The expert shared this information at the establishment ceremony of the organ donation movement in Vietnam at Viet Duc Friendship Hospital, which has currently accounted for 70% of the country’s total brain death and organ donation cases, on January 18.

Professor Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, president of the Organ Donation Mobilization Association in Vietnam, highlighted the global trend where a significant number of organ transplants come from donors with brain death. However, in Vietnam, the rate of organ donations from brain-dead and cardiac-death donors is less than 0.1% of the total donation sources.

She emphasized that while Vietnam's organ transplant technology is on par with the region and the world, the absence of Vietnam on the global and Southeast Asian organ donation maps reflects limitations in Vietnam's integration efforts.

As of October 2023, after 31 years of organ transplants and 13 years of retrieving organs from brain-dead donors, the country has conducted nearly 8,000 organ transplants. However, only around 6% of these cases, equivalent to nearly 500 cases, involved organs from brain-dead and cardiac-death donors.

(VietnamNet, Hanoi Moi, NLD, Tien Phong)