Description

The ongoing COVID pandemic has caused an immense and unexpected impact on the medical community worldwide. This crisis has demonstrated that the 21st century most important matters need to be faced globally, by joining efforts and exchanging knowledge and expertise. Beyond the human cost provoked by the current situation, COVID challenges healthcare professionals who, in many cases, have been required to stop their regular tasks and daily work, and make important efforts in favor of the population. Among the departments who have been considerably affected by the change in clinical activities, donation and transplantation departments en OPOs have been severely hit. Most countries have closed their transplant programs, but some of these closures were motivated by the situation observed in other continents before the virus arrived inside their borders.

As a result, while some programs have been able to open given the reduction in the COVID infections, other programs must remain closed due to the peak of the pandemic arriving later. As a consequence, these countries’ transplant programs have been on hold for over 4 months with a subsequent increased mortality in waiting list. The lack of deceased donation activities or 80% decrease on the number of organ donors, although caused in many cases by unavoidable circumstances, represents a setback in established donation models but especially in developing systems. For that reason, the proposed session is addressed to the donation and transplantation international community, in order to better face COVID after-effects considering the differences in health systems COVID infections, donation rates. The objective of these round table sessions is to share the experience regarding organ donation and transplant activity after the first peak of COVID infection, listening from key transplant and donation leaders (KTDL) from each WHO region will help the transplant network to be better prepare for further similar situations.