Muscat: The number of people registered with the Ministry of Health’s Shifaa platform for organ donation after death has seen a steady rise since the launch of the system in December 2021, according to Neven bint Ibrahim al Kalbaniyah, Head of the Organ Transplant Department at the Royal Hospital and member of National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization.
Seventeen kidney transplant operations from brain dead donors were performed at the Royal Hospital and Sultan Qaboos University Hospital. Besides, 300 kidney transplants and 13 liver transplants from living donors have been performed in the Sultanate of Oman, so far.
On October 24, 2021, a liver transplant operation was successfully performed for the first time in the Sultanate of Oman on a 5-year-old child at the Royal Hospital. The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Programme, seeks to lay administrative and regulatory foundations for organ transplants in line with the international medical and ethical standards, Dr Neven said.
Organ donation after death witnessed a great response from the Omani society with an increasing number of donors registering on Shifa platform to meet an increasing demand for donated organs, Dr Neven said. She added that the National Organ Transplant Organization was established on June 23, 2021 under the umbrella of Oman Medical Association which aims to increase awareness on the importance of organ donation. At the present time, those who wish to donate organs after death can register through the Ministry of Health’s Shefaa platform and choose the organs they wish to donate. The donor has to enter the personal information of one of his/her family members who have been informed about the donor’s decision to donate an organ after death. The registration requires the signature of two witnesses to complete the process. Then, the data is registered into a national database for organ donation after death, she concluded.
