Liver transplantation in the Middle East

 Here's a chapter on transplantation in a book about liver cancer.  The countries in the Middle East that can do liver transplants can also transplant kidneys, with living donors being the majority of donors across the region.

Liver Transplantation in the Middle East by Sezai Yilmaz,  In: Carr B.I. (eds) Liver Cancer in the Middle East. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78737-0_12

It contains some interesting summaries by country.  Here is the summary of the transplant situation in the UAE (about which I expect to be able to say more soon).

"6 LT in the United Arab Emirates

"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an Arabian Gulf country located at the southeast end of the Arabian Peninsula with a population of about 9.3 million. It has made great strides in healthcare over the past several years and has among the highest life expectancy in the region. However, one of the key lacking areas of medical care in the country was the availability of solid organ transplantation. Collaborative efforts began a few years ago aiming to establish thoracic and abdominal solid organ transplantation from deceased donors in addition to continued development of the existing program on kidney transplantation from living donors. The UAE played an important role in efforts leading up to the declaration of Istanbul on organ trafficking and transplant tourism in 2008, the groundwork for which was laid in a steering committee meeting organized by the Transplantation Society and the International Society of Nephrology in Dubai in December 2007. This landmark declaration helped establish a framework of ethical principles to guide the practice of transplantation worldwide. The legal definition of brain death in the UAE was confirmed in May 2017, paving the way for deceased donor organ transplantation [42].

"The Cleveland Clinic Foundation was instrumental in the accelerated path to establishment of a multi-organ transplant center at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, which began clinical operations in early 2015, was established as a partnership between Mubadala Healthcare, Abu Dhabi, and Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio. A meticulous and thoughtful collaborative approach, which began with identifying key operational needs, resulted in the establishment of transplant services within 2.5 years with the establishment of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. The first multi-organ procurement and transplant from a brain-dead donor in the UAE occurred at Al Qassimi Hospital in Sharjah on July 15, 2017 [42]. Also noteworthy was a regional organ sharing agreement with SCOT that enabled the utilization of deceased donor grafts for potential recipients in Saudi Arabia while awaiting full operational readiness for thoracic and LT at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. The overall organ donation rate remains low in terms of the number of organs recovered (3.66) and transplanted (3.57) per donor.

"Shortage of deceased donors remains one of the primary challenges facing the transplant community in the UAE. This mandated establishment of LDLT to complement ongoing efforts to improve DDLT. An extensive collaborative effort, with Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in Cleveland, Ohio, resulted in the first successful LDLT in the UAE on July 29, 2018. Since that time, an additional 13 LDLTs were performed (overall: four right lobe and ten left lobe grafts) over the past year and a half [42]."