Supplementary memorandum by Dr Rafael
Matesanz
After coming back to Madrid, I was thinking
about the possibility to add something to the inquiry, as you
suggested. Here is a paper[1]
which I think can help to summarize many of the question posed
during the session held in Westminster. With respect to the central
point: Why a EU directive? I would like to add something to what
was expressed last Thursday.
In my opinion, the point for countries like
UK, Spain, France, Germany and some other should be instead: EU
directive: why not? Provided the Commission has assured a "soft"
directive with basic requirements about the quality and safety
of organ transplantations, none of these western EU countries
which in fact are the leaders in this field and are already working
with high standards (surely much higher than those which probably
will be required for a common agreement) should be reluctant to
this initiative (at least I cannot see any future danger in this
sense). This is not the case however for many emerging countries
in the EU which are in fact very far from these standards and
which would benefit a lot from this initiative, and furthermore
from the Action Plan which will go together. Yesterday we had
a meeting in Madrid about the DOPKI project (with very significant
contributions from UK) and I guess that this "European Process"
is and will be very positive for organ donation and transplantation
in the whole Union.
Everybody agrees that a common organ EU sharing
system has no sense, out of very specific cases, but the establishment
of very basic organisational rules which assure for all the EU
citizens an access to these therapies and minimum common standards
can be very helpful and contribute to save many lives. I would
remark the especial importance that for all the recently (and
not so recently) admitted countries have all these projects and
how negative would be not to continue. The differences registered
in this field both from a qualitative and quantitative point of
view (from 35 to < 1 donors) are really not acceptable in a
common political space like the EU because they mean differences
in the possibilities of access of our citizens. I guess it is
in our hands try to find a solution.
Hope these reflections can help the Committee
in its important job.
1 Matesanz R and Dominguez-Gil B. Strategies to
optimize deceased organ donation, Transplantation Reviews
21 (2007) 177-188 Back
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