Qatar will soon open a multi-organ donor facility, which will offer technical procedures to facilitate donation of vital organs from donors and provide for patients in need of transplantation, as experts claim the attitude toward organ donation has changed in the country.

“The donor centre will open soon,” said Dr Yousuf Al Maslamani, chief of medical staff at the Hamad General Hospital told the media yesterday. The Organ Donor Centre will be under the Hamad Medical Cooperation but will function independently from the Organ Transplantation Centre.

The centre will have different sections such as promoting donations through awareness campaigns and other clinical procedures.

The initial campaign to create awareness about organ donation which begun recently has received high response as many people have registered to donate their organs after death.

“Our first aim was to create awareness and then to encourage people about organ donation. The response was very high; people’s attitude toward donating organs have changed. Around 400 people have registered for organ donation,” said Dr Al Maslamani.

Presently in Qatar only corneal transplant is not on waiting list, but patients in need of kidney and liver transplantation are put on a waiting list and pancreas transplant is yet to start.

Two kidney transplants have been done this year and another five are in line. Five-hundred other patients are on dialysis. The number of those waiting for kidney transplantation in the country is currently about 150 patients.

According to Dr Al Maslamani at least 50 brain deaths occurred in the country last year and two of them have donated organs.

The Organ Donor Centre and Organ Transplantation Centre are administrated by the Hamad Medical Cooperation, unlike other countries which has a donor centre separately managed by the sate and transplant being held at different hospitals.

“Recently, the Supreme Council of Health decided to give the donor centre’s responsibility to us, since it’s one hospital doing transplant here,” said Dr Al Maslamani.

He explained that both centres will function independently as it will help in the future when the centres begin to be administrated by different bodies.

“We want to separate the two processes, so it will be easy to transfer the responsibility; we will appoint a director, so the decisions will not be taken by the surgeons but someone else,” said Dr Al Maslamani.

“The centre will put all patients in one list and decide on priority and the donation process will be fair,” he explained.