"This is an important moment for the Department of General and Transplantation Surgery, headed by Professor Maciej Kosieradzki, as well as for our University. The Department is an important part of MUW, where every fifth organ in Poland is transplanted. This gift will enable MUW units to continue to maintain this high position among organ transplant centers. The car we receive will allow our staff and coordinators to expedite the process of organizing the transplantation of all the organs we transplant at our University. Thank you so much for your support. We appreciate it very much". - said Rector Professor Zbigniew Gaciong during the ceremonial handover of the vehicle.
Headed by Prof. Maciej Kosieradzki, Department of General and Transplantation Surgery of the Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Warsaw, located at the Infant Jesus Clinical Hospital of the University Clinical Center of the Medical University of Warsaw, has gained a car, which will be used by hospital coordinators to visit intensive care units and dialysis centers cooperating with the Department in the mazowieckie and swietokrzyskie voivodships, as well as to promote the idea of transplantation and provide personal and logistic support in registering the donor and arranging the donation. The Department has been dealing with this area of activity for years. Thanks to the dedication and work of hospital coordinators of the Department of General and Transplantation Surgery IJCH UCC MUW, every fifth organ in Poland is transplanted in the hospitals of the Medical University of Warsaw. As Professor Maciej Kosieradzki emphasized during the meeting, it is important to maintain this trend especially in the era of pandemics.
The car's donor, through the Polish Transplant Association, is the WhyNot Travel group.
"Our group supports Polish transplantology and today's gift in a form of lending a car is another proof of that" - said during the transfer of the car Mrs Katarzyna Domagała, the Development Director of WhyNot Travel Group.
"For as long as I can remember in the Department of General and Transplantation Surgery, back in the days of Prof. Wojciech Rowinski, an important activity of junior assistants was to develop contacts and establish relationships with intensive care units "in the area". The area covered about half of the hospitals of Mazowsze, Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, a significant part of Warmia-Mazury Voivodeship and today's Podlasie. We traveled there with Professor Wojciech Rowinski, and sometimes we had conversations with colleagues from those areas over the phone. Under Professor Andrzej Chmura, this role was taken over by hospital coordinators. Additionally, once a year we organized a conference for local teams in district hospitals, which tried to smuggle in various didactic-scientific messages concerning organ donation, but served primarily to strengthen relations and build trust during joint meetings". - says professor Maciej Kosieradzki, the current head of the Department of General and Transplantation Surgery.
"In 2015, after the death of Professor Wojciech Rowinski, I became the president of the Polish Transplantation Association. Since then, together with our coordinators, we have organized dozens of on-site ETPOD (European Training Program in Organ Donation) convention trainings at donor hospitals across the country, meetings for teachers, seminary alumni, and countless meetings with high school and middle school students. At dialysis stations, we strengthened the necessity and safety of organ donation from living donors. Several thousand people participated in our trainings. We reached all these places by available means of transport: our own cars, trains. At this moment, thanks to Why Not Group, we gain a useful tool to resume this activity" - explains professor Maciej Kosieradzki.
The professor adds that during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020, all transplant areas, except the heart transplantation, saw an approximately 20% decline in transplantations.
There were 1,473 organs transplanted in 2019, 1,180 organs in 2020, and 352 organs so far in 2021. Transplantologists performed 73 living donor transplants in 2019, 59 in 2020, and 15 in 2021. The number of deceased organ donors also declined from: 502 in 2019, 393 in 2020 to 107 in 2021.
"This year - if we don't do something now - promises to be even worse. We hope to reduce bed occupancy with Covid-19 patients and that the hospitals will be open to visits of vaccinated coordinators from the outside in order to resume training as well as to situations in which our assistance will be useful in completing the formalities and documents" - says Professor Maciej Kosieradzki.
The professor stresses that the promotional activities in the field of organ donation in Mazovia are currently carried out only by the Medical University of Warsaw, and the number of hospitals where organ donations took place last year fell to four in Mazovia.
Media contact: Marta Wojtach, spokesperson for MUW, rzecznik@wum.edu.pl, 605 57 91 91.
