Andorra Celebrates World Transplant Day with Tributes, Symposium, and Donation Advances

Andorra marked World Transplant Day with a series of events honouring donors and recipients, including a commemorative gathering by the ATIDA association and the Principality's first national donation symposium.

ATIDA celebrated the occasion and its 10th anniversary on Thursday at the Consell General under the theme "Donar és sembrar vida" – "To donate is to sow life". The event paid tribute to donors, recipients and the late former president Toni Gamero. Former ATIDA president Núria Gras recalled Gamero as someone who "left the job done" and belonged there that day.

A roundtable, moderated by Dr Chloë Ballesté of the DTI Foundation, featured transplant coordinator David Paredes from Barcelona's Hospital Clínic. Originally from Colombia, Paredes arrived in Barcelona 34 years ago for renal transplant training before shifting nearly three decades ago to donor coordination. He stressed discussing donation wishes openly during life to guide families, noting that donation follows exhaustive recovery efforts and never affects treatment decisions. Living donations can involve kidneys, liver parts, blood, bone marrow or tissues, while posthumous ones occur after brain death or circulatory arrest post-medical decisions to limit life support. Organs have tight timelines: hearts within four hours, livers, lungs or pancreases slightly longer, and kidneys up to 24 hours. Heart or lung transplants cost about €70,000, kidneys €40,000, covering surgery, hospital stays and initial care, plus lifelong immunosuppression and monitoring – all backed by public systems and agreements with centres like the Clínic, which handles Andorran cases.

Elena Baez, 50, from Barcelona and formerly treated at Meritxell Hospital, recounted her path from childhood hypoparathyroidism and Bartter syndrome, through post-2008 childbirth heart failure, a 2014 defibrillator, 2022 near-fatal arrhythmia, a March 2023 heart transplant with rejections, and a 2024 paired altruistic kidney transplant despite initial hesitation. She now enjoys an active life.

ATIDA secretary Mari Martínez highlighted advances, such as Meritxell staff training to identify brain death or circulatory arrest donors, with cornea donations already active. Paredes called for completing local processes to join Catalonia's distribution network, adding that AI aids organ assessment and recipient monitoring but cannot replace clinical judgment. Associations like ATIDA give a human face to the process by highlighting recipients' second chances. The event ended with planters distributed for a group planting on 10 October at Plaça de la Rotonda.

On Friday, the Health Ministry and SAAS hosted the symposium "La donació com a part de la nostra vida. Una mirada interdisciplinària de la donació", gathering national and international professionals to explore ethical, healthcare and social dimensions. Secretary of State Cristina Pérez outlined progress and bureaucratic challenges, especially cross-border death certification requiring patient transfers to sites like Barcelona. She said efforts are at an advanced stage to resolve these by year-end, allowing in-country extractions. Pérez urged embedding donation in life planning from youth to reduce family refusals driven by grief or misinformation, while praising advance directives.

Data showed strong engagement: over 1,600 umbilical cord blood donations since 2012, enabling seven transplants, with 22.7% of 2025 births contributing – nearly 70% public. The 2021 bone marrow programme has over 700 registrants, five confirmed matches and one effective donation with recipient. Since the 15 May 2025 cornea programme launch, 20 donors have yielded 16 viable corneas. The National Advance Directives Registry lists 932 entries (546 women, 386 men), mostly ages 61-70 via notary (678 cases), with recent simplifications like reducing witnesses from three to two. Pérez and professionals like nurse Víctor García emphasised discussing donation early, including with youth, to build a culture around it and ease end-of-life decisions. The ministry and SAAS are developing a strategy to fully integrate donation into the healthcare system as a core quality indicator.