Belgium and organ donation: a further increase in organ donation in 2007! Preface to the 15(th) Annual Meeting of the Belgian Transplantation Society.

In 2007, the Belgian annual rate of effective cadaveric organ donors further increased to 28.1 per million inhabitants, up from 26.2% in 2006 (http://www.transplant.be/donor/TxCoord.pdf). In numbers, 541 potential cadaveric organ donors were referred to the different transplant centers, resulting in 291 effective organ donors. The main reason for no organ retrieval was medical contraindications (34% of the total referrals). Family refusals dropped to less than 13%. Mean organ yielding was 3.55 per donation after brain death (DBD) donors and 2.28 per donation after cardiac death (DCD) donors, allowing a retrieval of 97.82 transplantable organs per million inhabitants, one of the highest so far to the best of our knowledge. This high rate of organ donation is certainly linked to the opting-out (or presumed consent) Belgian transplantation law, to the high motivation of the different Belgian transplant programs and intensive care units, to the confidence of the Belgian population in the Belgian medicine, and to the federal and regional political incentives to organ donation, as the Beldonor or the GIFT projects. This high rate of donation, in addition to active programs of living donation in kidney and liver transplantation and to MELD allocation, allowed to a significant decrease in the number of patients on the liver and kidney waiting lists( -34% and -18% in two years, respectively).