Vietnam’s Cho Ray Hospital, which receives a daily average of five people with brain death or a non-beating heart due to traffic accidents, has set up a unit to coordinate human organ transplants. The Unit for Coordinating Human Organ Transplants at the Ho Chi Minh City-based hospital is expected to help prevent illegal trading in human organs. Tran Ngoc Sinh, chairman of HCM City Nephro-Urological Association, said the hospital performed 40 kidney transplant surgeries every year, with living donor kidney transplantation accounting for 95%. Since 2008, Cho Ray hospital has saved the life of 13 people who needed kidneys. The organs were taken from seven donors whose hearts were still beating but had experienced brain death. Demand for organ transplants currently far exceeds the number of donations. Du Thi Ngoc Thu, head of the unit, said more than 6,000 people across the country with serious kidney failure were in need of kidney transplantation. A total of 1,500 people were waiting for liver transplants while 6,000 needed cornea transplants, Thu said. In Vietnam, the first organ transplant was carried out in 1992 at the Military Hospital 103 in Hanoi. The National Center for Coordinating Human Organ Transplants, the first of its kind in the country, was founded at the Vietnam-Germany Hospital in June 2013. (www.thanhnien.com.vn [1] Oct 22)
