Czech hospitals lack organ donors

Czech hospitals have a lack of organ donors which is limiting the number of life-saving transplants undertaken, the ctk news agency reports. According to Eva Pokorna, a chief transplant surgeon at Prague’s IKEM heart clinic, this is largely because hospitals are unable to spare the finances to employ specially trained staff who would manage the agenda and negotiate the issue with the families of potential donors. According to Czech law it is the duty of individual doctors to broach the subject with relatives and they often lack the time and space to do so. Last year IKEM conducted 50 heart transplants and there are 114 others on the waiting list. The Czech Republic is half-way down a list of European organ donors with 19 organ donors per 1 million inhabitants as compared to Croatia which tops the list with 36 donors.