100 days without transplants in BiH

(Patria) - "We address you with great bitterness, sadness, regret, anger, and disappointment, on the occasion of 100 days without transplants in our country. And after we went a year and a half without a single transplant in 2020 and 2021, when our patients were dying next to living donors, we thought that time would never and should never happen again. However, we were mistaken," said the Association of Dialysis and Transplanted Patients of FBiH.

They emphasize that in the first quarter of 2022, for a full 100 days, not a single transplant was performed.

“This is a direct attack on the lives of severely ill patients who are on dialysis, as well as those waiting for a transplant of the heart, liver, lungs, or other organs. This is silent euthanasia and a violation of human rights in the true sense of the word. And even though we have absolutely everything for transplants to be performed normally in my, your, and our country according to all European and world procedures, we are still stagnating, extinguishing the last hope for patients that they will ever receive the most important call in life, which is the call for a transplant. Now everything is revealed, because clinical centers, their managers, and those responsible for the transplant program have prioritized the pandemic, saying that it is impossible to perform organ transplants while the pandemic lasts,” said the president of the Association, Tomislav Žuljević.

They remind that in the second half of last year, 2021, UKC Tuzla and KCUS performed 10 transplants, even though, as they say, we had four times more COVID-19 infections than in these first spring days.

“Two million marks are allocated every year for transplants in FBiH, so money is not a problem, and it is actually unknown where that money ends up, if we have almost no transplants. We also have a rulebook on rewards for everyone involved in the transplant process, for transplant coordinators, we also have a Law modeled after the best European countries, experts who know how to perform complex surgical procedures and transplants, and we have no transplants. Why? Perhaps because it is easier to refer a patient abroad where TX will cost much more than in BiH? It should be known that not all patients can afford such a luxury and be treated abroad, and on the other hand, we are directly destroying the transplant and other branches of medicine in our country in this way. What is actually the issue? Secret agreements? Deals? Corruption? Pharmaceutical lobbies? Or a bit of everything. We have 3,000 patients on dialysis in BiH, of which 2,000 are in FBiH, and about 700 could be transplanted, but more than 90% of them have no chances at all thanks to this incapable state. It is time to find out who does not want transplants to be performed and to finally restore hope to patients that has long been lost, because our patients are dying again next to living donors,” they state from this association.