New record for organ transplants in Spain in 2015

Spain's National Transplants Organization (ONT) announced on Tuesday that the country had set a new record for organ donations in 2015.

The year saw a 10 percent rise in the number of organ donors to 1,851, which allowed doctors to carry out 4,769 operations: an average of 13 operations a day at a rate of over one operation every two hours.

Spain had 39.7 organ donors per million head of population in 2015, well above both the European Union average of around 26 donors per million and the US average of 19.6.

Overall there was a 9.4 percent rise in the number of transplants, with 2,905 kidney transplants (8.5 percent up), 1,162 liver transplants (9 percent), 299 heart transplants (13 percent), 294 ling transplants (12 percent), 97 pancreas (a 20 percent rise) and 12 transplants of intestines (100 percent higher than in 2014).

The director of the ONT, Rafael Matesanz explained at the presentation of the data: "The result is very favorable for the defense of the general interest and also to defend the health of the nation's citizens.

He added that the new record was not down to chance, but because Spain "has a transplant structure that works."

Improvements in road safety mean that in 2015 just 4.2 of donations were from people who had died in road accidents, with the majority (65.2 percent) coming from donors who had died of cerebrovascular failure, indeed since Spain's current Road Safety bill was introduced in 2005, the number of donors from road accidents has fallen by 70 percent. Endit