Introduction: World Health Organization (WHO) is advocating for the development of self-sufficiency in Donation and Transplantation (D&T) in all countries, as a practical alternative to combat transplant tourism and commercialism around the world.
KSA is a Middle East country with 27.448.000 population. In 2016, 92 deceased donors (3.07 pmp) were reported. Therefore, 265 organ transplantations (9.6 pmp) were performed. Organ shortage represents a major obstacle preventing a further increase of transplantation in KSA.
In 2017, the Ministry of Health of KSA launched a 3-year project coordinated by DTI foundation with the support of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT).
The project aims to improve the D&T rates by implementing an organ donation quality management system based on the implementation of the most successful models in organ donation (SEUSA) and quality systems (ODEQUS).
Materials and Methods: Through the use of SEUSA and ODEQUS methodologies (already described previously by us), as valuable and replicable international collaborative strategies to improve organ donation worldwide, the project methodology includes: a) Competence Authorities involvement; b) Diagnosis of the current situation (national, regional and hospital level) using ODDS (Organ Donation Diagnostic Surveys) and developing in situ expert’s visits; c) Detection of all brain and cardiac deaths in the hospitals implementing the DAS (Decease Alert System); d) implementation of the ODEQUS quality indicators (pilot phase); e) Knowledge exchange activities; f) External hospital audits.
Continuous monitoring was performed to allow data collection and analysis.
Results and Discussion: The pilot phase linked 5 hospitals from different background in Riyadh and Jeddah. D&T healthcare professionals were trained in the application of the quality indicators. An IT tool beta version was created to collect data derived from the clinical donation activity.
A 3-year plan was developed to expand the project up to 25 hospitals and to increase the D&T rates of the country.
The project allowed to broaden SCOT’s geographical representation with the result of KSA becoming a reference model in D&T in the Middle East region.
Conclusion: SEUSA and ODEQUS methodologies have shown, to be a good option to consolidate D&T systems. Its use has allowed to homogenize the organ donation process creating a methodology to evaluate the organ procurement performance and defining improvement strategies enhancing the efficiency of transplant systems in KSA.