Spain has a lesson for the rest of the world about organ donation

Jun 27, 2018

Surgeons Lloyd Ratner (R) and Karim Zalazun (L) harvest a donor kidney for patient Andrew Abernathy, who participated in a five-way organ transplant swap, in New York, August 1, 2012. Abernathy's partner David Ferguson donated a kidney for transplant to a stranger while at the same time someone else donated a kidney to Abernathy as part of chain of kidney donations that allowed five people to receive a transplanted kidney over a two day period. The health dangers for kidney donors is believed to be low. The risk of death from the surgery is 1 in 1,700, according to the National Kidney Foundation, and life expectancy is said to be unchanged with one kidney. Picture taken August 1, 2012. To match story USA-KIDNEY/SWAP REUTERS/Keith Bedford (UNITED STATES - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY) - GM2E884068Y01

High donation levels have not only health benefits, but also economic ones. Image: REUTERS/Keith Bedford (UNITED STATES - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY) - GM2E884068Y01

Chris Baraniuk

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Health and Healthcare is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Spain

Spain had 46.9 donors per million people (pmp) in 2017. Image: International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation

Have you read?

Image: Kyle Bean and Sara Morris for Mosaic

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.