Increasing the consent for brain death donor family members
Altantulga Bayaraa1, Battsetseg Gonchigjav1, Batjargal Enkhee1, Midriimaa Purevjav1, Batchuluun Pandaan1.
1Regulatory department of cell tissue and organ transplantation, Center for Health Development, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Introduction & Purpose: Mongolia's Donor Law was first adopted in 2000 and amended in 2012 and 2018 respectively. The Regulatory department cells, tissues, and organs transplantation of the Center for Health Development has been established in 2018. There are 3 donor hospitals and 2 transplantation hospitals in Mongolia. Our department gets information daily from the donor hospital’s brain death diagnosis committee, if there is a donor with brain death, we make consultations with family members. It may be rejected because of religion, superstition, or personal opinion. Changing such factors will increase the number of family members' consent and the number of transplantations.
Method: The study included 20 family members of the last three years approved by the brain death diagnosis committee for 3 Donor Hospitals.
Result: After meeting with those 46 family members, 26 /65%/of them accepted and 20 /35%/ of them denied. Organ harvesting of 29 kidneys and 20 livers was successfully done from 23 out of 26 consented donors and thus saved 49 lives. The reasons for the rejection of family members are lamas /5 families/, shaman /5 families/, family opinion /3 families/ and lack of information about this /7families/.
As well from the studies of organ transplantation and donor’s awareness, 10 /22%/ of these families were knowledgeable, of which 5 were approved, donor families. The 23 /50%/ families did not have any understanding, of which 7 were members of refused families.
Conclusion: From these, we could say that having knowledge about organ donation is increasing the likelihood of approval of becoming a donor. Therefore, it is important to meet with the religious representatives, which is one of the major opposing factors in order to give a proper understanding of donations to the public.