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Eurotransplant

Dr. Yonatan Halevy

Director of Shaare Zedek Hospital
[1 minute  28 seconds]

I served as the Chairman of the Israel Transplant Center for the last 4 ½ years. Before my time, shortly before I came on board, my predecessor tried to form some contact with Euro-Transplant which is equivalent to the American UNOS and to the Israeli Transplant Center. And I understand that such an agreement necessitated mutuality. And when they tried it, and we got our first organs — mainly kidneys because it’s less practical for hearts and livers because of the time allowed between harvesting the organ and transplanting it, which is up to 24 hours in kidneys and only around 5 hours for livers, hearts, and lungs. So I understand just from reading the history that few kidneys survived here, and we could not reciprocate because of the low availability of organs in Israel. So this agreement did not pick up. The Chairman of Euro-Transplant came here, we negotiated – – it was already in my time – – and it was very clear that we will not be able to reciprocate. It would be mainly a unilateral agreement which, of course, there is no reason in the world that the Europeans should agree to it.

 

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