Mission and Challenges of the Ibero-American Society of Transplant Coordinators

Mission and Challenges of the Ibero-American Society of Transplant Coordinators HE MISSION as well as the challenge of our Society is to increase organ and tissue donation. Latin America has an average donation rate of 6 donors per million people, a number that has been substantially improving in the last years since more than 1,000,000 transplantations have been performed in the continent. The professionals working in transplantation coordination face many difficulties: organizational aspects, scarce human resources trained in transplant coordination, insufficient Continuing Medical Education programs, inadequate structural support, and a poor salary. These factors prevent them from being more committed and focused on transplantation coordination. The Ibero-American Society of Transplant Coordinators has 4 essential goals: registration of the activity, improvement of the training in human resources, knowledge of legal and ethical aspects, and protection of the professional interests of Transplant Coordinators. A Donation and Transplantation Registry has been implemented on-line from the website www.grupopuntacana.org. In this website, it is also possible to find information about Ibero-American transplant coordination organizations, national laws, transplantation centers, and demographic aspects in each country. Annual donation and transplantation data are available since 2000. This step has required a major effort, taking into account the difficulties every registration system involves. The idea and the method we implemented have been really innovative, allowing universal access to the information for all members. The Pan American Health Organization supported this initiative. Another important goal of our society is to increase human resource training in various areas of transplantation coordination with special emphasis on communication

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© 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc. 360 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010-1710 Transplantation Proceedings, 41, 3449 (2009)

skills, hospital management, and brain-death diagnosis by implementing university degree courses. Ethical aspects are one of the main purposes of our Society. We seek to assure their accomplishment by supporting international recommendations. The Red-Consejo Iberoamericana de Donacion y Trasplantes, which gathers the Health Minister delegates from all Ibero-American countries, participates in our Society. Its contribution is extremely important because it complements the political and technical aspects of donation and transplantation, contributing with significant recommendations and solutions for the main difficulties. In the last 5 years, donation in Latin America has been changing significantly. Training in human resources, professionalization of Transplant Coordinators, as well as incorporation of providers of intensive care to the transplant coordination score have been crucial for this change. Our subsequent challenges are as follows: to consolidate transplantation coordination, to achieve a recognized medical specialty, and to define the donor potential in Latin America through epidemiological studies of brain death, which will enable us to establish accurately where we are and where we can go. That information should be accompanied by political strategies to improve the major problem in Latin America: brain death detection. The Society has the honor of publishing our articles in this prestigious journal, which supports organ and tissue donation in Latin America. We want to thank the Editorial Board on behalf of the Ibero-American Society of Transplant Coordination as well as on behalf of our patients on transplant waiting lists. Raul Mizraji, MD Ibero-American Transplant Coordinator Society President

0041-1345/09/$–see front matter doi:10.1016/j.transproceed.2009.09.002 3449