3,866 organ transplants take place in Turkey in last year

ANKARA (A.A) - February 20, 2012 - 3,866 organ transplants, including the transplants of kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, pancreas, cardiac valves and small intestines, took place in Turkey in 2011, figures of the Turkish Health Ministry indicated. Speaking to the Anadolu Agency (AA), a senior official with the Turkish Health Ministry, Arif Kapuagasi, said that hundreds of patients in Turkey waited for organ transplants and that such transplants were a "hope for life" for these patients. At the present time, 20,315 people in Turkey wait for organ transplants. 18,128 of these people wait for kidneys, 1,707 wait for liver while 262 wait for heart, Kapuagasi said. Touching on the cost of the surgeries for organ transplants in Turkey, Kapuagasi stressed that the organ transplant centers in Turkey do not demand any fees for transplants. We have sent doctors to the United States and Austria to get trained in the transplant of lungs. We are holding talks with various Turkish universities and encouraging them to open centers of lung transplants, Kapuagasi noted. We have a lung transplant center in the Aegean. Akdeniz University in next in line for the lung transplant center. Lung transplant centers will be opened at Marmara University and Gulhane Military Medicine Academy (GATA), Kapuagasi underlined. As far as heart transplant centers in Turkey are concerned, there are no problems, Kapuagasi added.