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Letter from the Editor

Beatriz Domínguez-Gil, MD, PhD
Director Organización Nacional de Trasplantes, Spain
Editor of Newsletter Transplant

Dear friends figures online. Information presented in the Newsletter
Transplant is not limited to the organ field, but also
It is with pleasure that I introduce a new issue of the covers tissues and cells. Provided by the Centro
Newsletter Transplant, one of the most valuable tools Nazionale di Trapianti (CNT) in Italy, which conducts
produced by the Committee of Transplantation of the the corresponding annual data collection, the
Council of Europe (CD-P-TO) in conjunction with the Newsletter Transplant also presents data on the
Spanish Organización Nacional de Trasplantes (ONT). donation, procurement, processing, distribution and
Since 1996, this publication has allowed the CD-P-TO to clinical use of tissues and cells from a significant
share information on donation and transplantation number of countries.
activities in member states of the Council of Europe
(CoE) – and beyond – and to present some of the This issue of the Newsletter Transplant also presents
projects developed by this committee and documents documents produced by the CD-P-TO during the last
of relevance to the field. The Newsletter Transplant is in year. First, guidance on the practical implementation
itself an opportunity to demonstrate the active of the fundamental principle that “the human body and
contribution of the CD-P-TO to secure fundamental its parts shall not give rise, as such, to financial gain” is
human rights, as well as to increase organ availability, presented. This document has been produced by the
improve the effectiveness of transplantation systems Committee of Bioethics of the Council of Europe (DH-
and enhance the quality and safety of organs, tissues BIO), with the cooperation of the CD-P-TO. The
and cells for clinical use. committee has also addressed a recent proposal to
include donor-recipient pairs from developing
Without doubt, monitoring of practices in donation countries in kidney paired exchange programmes
and transplantation of substances of human origin in (KEPs) in developed countries on the basis of financial
member states is essential for the sake of transparency incompatibility – the inability of recipients in
and international benchmarking. This is the main aim developing countries to afford the costs of
of the Newsletter Transplant and the reason it has transplantation. The CD-P-TO has evaluated the
become an international reference. In this new issue, proposal in detail and has raised serious ethical
the Newsletter Transplant reports data from almost 70 concerns about this initiative, recommending member
countries throughout the world for the year 2017 states not to engage in such practices. The document
(global data refer to 2016). The information presented summarising the position of the group is included in
relates to organ donation and transplantation this new issue of the Newsletter Transplant. This global
activities, management of the waiting lists, rate of kidney exchange proposal must be differentiated from
refusals to organ donation and transplant centres. For KEPs built on robust ethical frameworks. This issue
the very first time, data are displayed by gender for includes a document elaborated by the CD-P-TO briefly
both organ donors and recipients. For obvious reasons, describing European KEPs and addressing the
not all information that is collected from countries is challenges that existing programmes face to further
displayed in the Newsletter Transplant, but additional increase their effectiveness and better serve the
data can be provided to end users on an ad hoc basis transplantation needs of patients.
and upon request. Let me take this opportunity to
remind you that the underlying data collection is also The CD-P-TO has also contributed to the elaboration
hosted by the Global Observatory on Organ Donation and dissemination of the Council of Europe Convention
and Transplantation, developed and maintained by the against Trafficking in Human Organs which provides
ONT on behalf of the World Health Organization. The clarity on the practices that must be criminalised and
Observatory allows users to download data and create mechanisms to be strengthened for cooperation and

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