Each of us can be a donor or recipient
This year Belarus plans to conduct about 300 organ transplants. Over the past six months, 151 transplants have been done. By the number of 1 million people, this is more than in Poland or Greece and is comparable to what is in Israel. Organ and tissue transplantation is the most high-tech type of medical care. He is not able to improve demographic indicators or save humanity from incurable diseases. However, this is evidence of a high level of medicine in the country, a “locomotive”, which pulls oncology, cardiology and a number of other medical specialties.
It should be understood that a waiting list for a kidney, heart or liver transplant is a normal practice throughout the world. We have such practice, and, characteristically, a patient can wait for transplantation of the same kidney (the most common type of transplantation) within 2 years (this corresponds to international standards). True, in the United States, for example, a waiting list is common for “ours” and foreign citizens, and in the EU countries, including ours, a quota is provided for foreigners: the number of organ transplants by the latter should not exceed about 10 percent. By the way, the number of such transplants cannot be constantly “increased”: the matter does not end exclusively with the operation itself. Further, patients require the constant intake of a large number of expensive drugs that are not produced in our country. Their total annual cost is from 5 thousand dollars, and all these costs are borne by the state.
According to Oleg RUMMO, deputy chief physician for surgery at the 9th City Clinical Hospital, head of the Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Organ and Tissue Transplantation, chief freelance transplantologist of the Ministry of Health of Belarus, performing operations remains a priority for Belarusian citizens. Roughly speaking, if one organ “suits” both a Belarusian and a foreigner, then the transplant will be done to a compatriot, although, as a rule, it is a matter of making a valuable organ suitable for at least someone. In general, 169 organ transplants were performed last year, of which only 8 were transplanted to foreign citizens. This year it is 14 out of 151. The profitability of operations performed by foreigners is very high. For one such operation, you can perform 2-3 operations for our citizens.
Transplantation is not just the last treatment method, but also the most expensive method, besides it is associated with a huge number of complications. Transplantologists say that for this reason they are much better at infectious disease specialists understanding infectious diseases. In order for the new organ to take root, the patient is prescribed special therapy that constantly suppresses the immune system. And against this background, the development of any, even the most insignificant (for an ordinary person) infection proceeds unpredictably. Here, in principle, is the answer to the question why transplant technology is so expensive. Because the enormous amount of drugs that must be used in order for the transplant to be successful is very expensive. The organ itself (mainly organs of cadaveric donors are transplanted) costs nothing …
“For us, the donor is a living person,” says Olga Oleinikova, director of the Russian Center for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology, chief freelance pediatric oncology hematologist at the Ministry of Health of Belarus. – For bone marrow transplantation, it is necessary to take bone marrow, stem cell from a living donor. By the way, for ten years now we have been performing the largest number of bone marrow transplant operations among the countries of the former Soviet Union. True, only now we have begun to form a city registry of donors. There is hope that we will gradually create a republican and, together with Russia, a Slavic register of bone marrow donors. ”
Today, the level of activity of performing heart transplants is higher than, say, in Russia. In July, Belarusian transplantologists performed the 50th heart transplant. In the near future, complex operations will be performed on a heart and kidney transplant, then a heart and lung transplant, after a heart and liver, said Yury Ostrovsky, head of the laboratory of heart surgery at the Cardiology Research and Research Center “Cardiology”, chief freelance cardiac surgeon of the Ministry of Health of Belarus. He also said that in the next few months the Belarusian team of specialists will work together with Kazakh specialists, so that before the end of this year, the first heart transplant will be performed in Kazakhstan.