TEHRAN – For the first time in Iran, hearts of two brain-dead donors were transported with medically-configured aircraft from the city of Yazd to Tehran.

Mohammad Sarvar, the head of air ambulance department of Iran’s National Emergency Medical Service Organization, said that the brain-dead donors were two men of 18 and 30 years old from Yazd and their hearts were transported to two hospitals in Tehran, Mehr reported on Tuesday.

The Tehran transplant team flew to Yazd on 12:10 Monday noon and joined the Yazd transplant team at the Shahid Rahnamoun Hospital in Yazd and returned to Yazd airport by helicopter and landed in Tehran on 16:10, he explained.

One of the hearts was transported to the Imam Khomeini Hospital and the other one was transported to the Shahid Rajaie Hospital.

The procedure from surgically removing the hearts from donors to placing them into the recipient took one hour and 10 minutes, he noted.

Previously, air ambulance transplantations had been done from Yazd and Rasht to Tehran, he said.

However, this is for the first time that two hearts are transplanted concurrently via air ambulance, he explained.

In early July, the health ministry announced that it plans to establish a registry system for organ donation shipping.

The ministry is now working on a comprehensive map nationwide in order to transfer organs for donation via air ambulance in the fastest way. Usage of motorcycle ambulances, air ambulance, ambulance car, and even airliners are assessed in software, which can find the fastest way that is needed to ship an organ in the system.

Organ donation rate in Iran

In February, the transplantation and treatment of diseases department at the health ministry announced that the organ donation rate has increased by 60 times over the past 18 years.

Although Iran ranks 26 in organ donation in the world, it can claim better ranks given some plans being implemented in this regard.

If Iran moves ahead with the current trend, it will achieve 45 percent increase by the Iranian calendar year 1404 (March 2025-March 2026).

Organ donation, how and why?

Organ transplantation is one of the great advances in modern medicine, but unfortunately, the need for organ donors is much greater than the number of people who actually donate.

According to the figures revealed by the International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation (IRODaT) Spain leads the world in organ donation.

Figures published for 2017 reveal that 2,183 people in Spain became organ donors after they died. That’s 46.9 per million people in the population (pmp) – a standard way of measuring the rate of donation in a country, The Independent reported in July 2018.

According to the data published on IRODaT by the end of 2017 Iran’s per million population of actual deceased organ donors was 11.43. In 1996 Iran’s per million population of actual deceased organ donors was 0.1, which compared to the current pmp shows a great increase.

Some 5,000 people die of brain death annually in Iran, out of 3,000 brain deaths reported last year being qualified to be organ donors, only 926 donated their organs.

SB/MG