متوفر باللغة العربية

Organ trafficking and the reported manipulation of data from patients on waiting lists (see A. Ginzel, M. Kraushaar and S. Winter Der Spiegel, 30 July 2012) are putting organ transplantation at risk by encouraging public distrust and threatening to reduce organ donation.

As former president of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation and of the foundation Swiss Blood Stem Cells, I suggest that haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation can offer lessons in stricter control of organ transplants and in promoting global cooperation.

The Worldwide Network for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (www.wbmt.org) has 20 million volunteer stem-cell donors, whose human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) have been typed to allow matching. Donors are selected only for matching with individual recipients and are protected and followed up according to standardized rules (J. P. Halter et al. Bone Marrow Transpl. http://doi.org/h54; 2012).

An accreditation system that ensures uniform quality of products and processes operates under identical regulations in Europe, the United States and Canada (see www.jacie.org and www.factwebsite.org), with health-care providers and payers increasingly demanding this accreditation as a condition for reimbursement. Internal and external audits of processes, together with standardized reporting to national and international data registries, are requisite.

Solid-organ transplantation would also benefit from a global quality-management system and from national networks of living HLA- and blood-typed volunteer donors. Although it will be hard to stamp out fraud altogether, professional oversight of activities would safeguard the interests of prospective donors and encourage more to register (A. Rios et al. Transplant Proc. 44, 1489–1492; 2012).