Introduction: World Health Organization is advocating for the development of self-sufficiency in donation and transplantation (D&T) worldwide. Since 2017, the Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) launched a program coordinated by DTI Foundation (DTI) with the support of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT) aiming to improve the deceased donation rates by implementing educational programs and quality management systems. The present study summarizes the effect of the implementation of a quality indicators pilot program and training programs in the KSA’s critical pathway for organ donation.

Methods: The DTI-SCOT collaboration has included: a) diagnosis study to achieve a comprehensive vision of donation system (2017); b) implementation of a pilot program to maximize the donor referral in 6 centers; c) monthly follow-up to analyze the data collected leaded by international experts, d) external audits and e) implementation of four intermediate TPM online training at national level (2020-21).

Results: The collaboration allowed to identify the organizational, structural, and educational needs. At the pilot program hospitals, the donation alerts increased from 100 to 298 during the first year of the project (250 of these were potential, 101 eligible and 26 were actual donors).  This represented near 200% increase in potential donor detection and referral and a final 44% increase in the donation rate. So far, more than 250 ICU professionals from more than 30 hospitals have gone trough the TPM program. In total, 959 health care professionals have participated in awareness activities.

Conclusions: The collaboration with DTI made possible to stablish new donor detection and audit methodologies. In-hospital protocols were reviewed and redefined, specifically those related to brain death diagnosis and donor maintenance. As seen in Figure 1, during 2020 , 113 deceased donors were reported. Therefore, 342 deceased organ transplantations were performed.