transplants
Article reserved for subscribers
With 30% refusal of donations for twenty-five years, France is struggling to convince the reluctant. Transplant recipients and donors campaign for better recognition of the act.
“The only year in which the organ donation refusal rate fell significantly below 30% in France was when Grégory died in 2007,” says Pierre Lemarchal, father of the young singer spotted by reality TV, who died at the age of 23. Suffering from cystic fibrosis, he was awaiting a lung transplant but the graft never arrived. Since then, in addition to the association he created with his wife to fight against cystic fibrosis, Pierre Lemarchal has campaigned for organ donation to become a real subject of reflection and better public policies in France: “It drives me crazy because we could save people with better communication and awareness on the subject.”
In France, 500 people die each year for lack of a transplant. According to data compiled by the Greffes + collective, which brings together nine patient and family associations, more than 700 people died in 2019 out of the 26,000 waiting for a kidney, lung or liver transplant. 5,900 patients were able to receive transplants that year. Very different figures in Spain, the world leader in organ donation. With a refusal rate of only 14% and 48.9 dead donors per million inhabitants in 2019, the country is far ahead of France and its 27.9 donors per million inhabitants, according to the…