Hanoi (VNA) – Organ transplantation in Vietnam, despitedifficulties, has recorded numerous achievements this year, giving hope tothousands of patients nationwide.

According to Trinh Hong Son, director of the Vietnam NationalCoordinating Centre for Human Organ Transplantation under the Ministry ofHealth, in Hanoi’s major hospitals alone, about 6,000 patients need a kidneytransplant and more than 1,500 patients are on the waiting list for liver transplant.Over 6,000 people need cornea replacement, while heart and lung transplants arecritical to save hundreds of others.

In Vietnam, organ donation is yet to be accepted by the mass, hence ascarcity of tissues and organs for transplantation, particularly those frombrain-dead patients. As of August 31, the number of brain-dead and circulatory-deaddonors reached 223, accounting for 6.6 percent of the total donors. Themajority of organs used in transplantation in Vietnam are from living donors.

On October 16, a tissue bank under the Hanoi-based Viet Duc Hospital,the first of its kind in Vietnam, became fully operational. To date, it haspreserved nearly 1,000 skull fragments, heart valves, sinews, and bloodvessels.

On December 12, nearly 500 doctors and medical staff from Viet Duchospital, without the help of foreign experts, carried out four organtransplantations simultaneously to four patients. All the organs were donatedby a brain-dead man from the northern province of Ninh Binh.

The first case was the transplant of two lungs on a 17-year-oldpatient, which lasted 14 hours. Vietnam has so far successfully carried outthree transplants of lungs but this is the first time Vietnamese doctorsperformed the transplant of two lungs at the same time successfully.

The donor’s heart was used for a 60-year-old patient, the liver for a63-year-old woman and one kidney for a 41-year-old man.

The other kidney was transported to the Nhi Dong 2 Hospital in Ho Chi MinhCity for another kidney transplant on a 15-year-old boy.

With this success, Viet Duc Hospital set a new record of the number of surgeriesto take and transplant the most organs at the same time.

Vietnam has so far conducted 3,200 kidney transplants, 105 livertransplants, 27 heart transplants and only three cases of lung transplants.-VNA