Transplants up due to Zammit
A threefold increase in heart and lung transplants carried out at Athens’s Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center has been attributed to the gesture of Australian national Oliver Zammit to donate the organs of his 20-year-old son Doujon, who was beaten to death on Myconos last summer. Surgeons at the center carried out a total of 19 transplants last year, nearly three times the number in previous years, which ranged from six to eight. The director of the Onassis’s board, Ioannis Papadimitriou, yesterday praised the courage and integrity of Oliver Zammit, who visited the center. Papadimitriou remarked that Zammit’s gesture had dual significance – it saved a human life and it also served to raise public awareness of and sensitivity toward the need for organ donations. There are currently 21 people on the Onassis Center’s waiting list, 13 of whom are on life-support machines, while many have been waiting more than two years for a donor.
