Greece continues to lag in organ transplants
The National Transplant Organization (EOM) repeated its call for more organ donors on Thursday, citing data suggesting that transporting patients to other countries from Greece for transplants costs healthcare funds around 11 million euros a year.
EOM said 50 patients had to be taken to other countries this year in order to receive an organ transplant and that there were only seven donors per million of the population in 2012, down from 7.2 per million last year.
EOM noted that one of the main reasons why Greece continues to rank at the low end of the European Union scale for transplants is that by law organs can only be harvested in intensive-care units and that these are ill-equipped for the task.