Organ drive meets poor reception
A drive to enlist more organ donors during the 2001 population census has produced desultory results, eliciting a positive response from only 30,000 people, the head of the National Transplant Organization Ioannis Vlachoyiannis said yesterday. Vlachoyiannis attributed the poor response to a failure by census takers to distribute more than 300,000 of the 5 million forms EOM made available for potential donors to complete, as he said there had been a gradual change in people’s attitudes regarding the concept of organ donation. There are 78,500 registered organ donors in Greece, the majority (44,367) of whom are women and 30,783 are aged 36-50. Most live in Attica and Central Macedonia, but many are from Eastern Thrace (4,000) and Crete. In 2001 there were 74 kidney transplants from deceased donors and 87 from living donors (compared to 32 and 75 respectively in 2000).
