Tunisia and Algeria each have their own national agency for organ and tissue donation. Morocco does not have one. However, all the countries of Europe and the USA, which have developed national programs for organ donation and transplantation, have structures dedicated to this type of activity.
Where do observers in Morocco wonder about the non-creation of a National Agency for the promotion of organ and tissue donation?
On the occasion of World Kidney Day, which this year coincides with March 9, 2023, several voices are rising for the Moroccan Ministry of Health to fill this gap. However, Morocco has all the human and material means to become the first country to “transplant” organs in the Maghreb, in the Arab countries, and in Africa.
A commitment in high places to promote this aspect of modern Moroccan medicine will place the Kingdom among the great Nations which have developed organ donation and transplantation in the world, such as the USA and the Kingdom of Spain.
A national program of kidney donation and transplantation in our Kingdom must be considered as a humanitarian project that can be described as the “Project of the Moroccan Nation”. For its launch, its development and its sustainability, it will need a charismatic leader, the Head of State, who can take it to heart, religiously and humanely.
Moroccan urologists have all the technical skills to take from a donor (living or brain dead) and to transplant a kidney in a patient with end-stage renal failure whose survival depends on the dialysis machine, 3 sessions per week at the rate of 4 hours per session.
Kidney transplantation frees this patient from all these constraints and offers him a better quality of life.
Today, Morocco has more than 500 hemodialysis centers spread over the public, private and military sectors in large and small cities of the Kingdom. For example, Souk Sebt or Souk Larbaa have their hemodialysis center. These centers take care of more than 37,000 Moroccan patients with end-stage renal failure. And since December 2022, with the generalization of compulsory health insurance, Morocco can be proud of having zero patients on the hemodialysis waiting list.
Unfortunately, all Moroccan nephrologists and epidemiologists agree that the number of patients who will need dialysis is increasing, for the lack of a prevention policy. The primary causes are untreated diabetes and high blood pressure.
Dialysis is a money pit. The therapeutic alternative represented by the kidney transplant offers a better quality of life and would cost less from the second year of the kidney transplant.
Today, at all costs, the 7 university hospitals in the Kingdom as well as the hospitals qualified as non-profit establishments perform around thirty kidney transplants per year.
This is a poor indicator of the level of technicality and modernity of Moroccan medicine.
Because of the technical capacity of our urologists, our nephrologists, our hospitals as well as our healthcare reimbursement funds offer the possibility of carrying out ten times more kidney transplants per year.
During the 19th national congress of nephrology, which was held in Casablanca from March 2 to 4, 2023, Pr Ramdani Benyounès, one of the pioneers of modern Moroccan nephrology, calls on each of the nephrology centers in the Kingdom: That each center offers ONLY ONE (1) patient per year for a kidney transplant. Namely, a recipient patient with a living donor from his family.
By a simple calculation, this will give 500 kidney transplants per year for Morocco.
This will make Morocco the first kidney transplant country in the Maghreb, Africa, and the Arab world.
But, it will remain far behind Spain, the first kidney “graft” in Europe and second after the USA in the world, with around 5,000 per year, including 1,000 from a living donor.
Asked about the possibility of transplanting 500 kidneys per year in Morocco, Pr Tariq SQALLI, HOUSSAINI, head of the nephrology department at the University Hospital of Fez and president of the Moroccan society of nephrology, confirms that Morocco has all the medical skills, specifying that all legal and religious issues are perfectly suited to develop organ donation and transplantation in our country.
Organ donation and transplantation in a country like Morocco is not just the business of doctors and surgeons.
Everyone is concerned, the man of religion, the imam in his mosque, the media, social networks, the teacher in his class as well as those responsible for road safety. Because alas, each year we deplore in our country 4000 deaths because of accidents on the public road (AVP).
These accidental deaths can give life (sampling of a heart, kidney, or liver) and sight (sampling of corneas from the eye) to thousands of people. But this requires a whole organization which we, unfortunately, do not have today under our skies. It is a great emergency that must be dealt with.
If the health department and doctors can be a locomotive to move forward with organ transplantation, this humanitarian project that can be described as “the Moroccan Nation Project” needs a charismatic leader who can take him to the Heart, religiously and humanely.
