Kidney exchange proposed for Qatar

Here's a story from the Gulf Times.

Kidney donation: Qatar study reveals incompatibility

"Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) has emerged as an attractive option for donor-recipient pairs who are not immunologically compatible with each other.
The study 'Safe and ethical living kidney donation in Qatar: A national health system’s approach', recently appeared on Qatar Medical Journal which is part of the publications on QScience.com, an online publishing platform from Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press.
The study was conducted by three Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) officials, Mohamed Asim, Yousuf al-Maslamani, and Hassan al-Malki.
The study suggests that establishment of a national KPD registry and perhaps a unified registry in the Gulf region will have the potential to maximise living donor transplant rates. Collaboration with international societies such as Transplantation Society, International Society of Nephrology, and European Society for Organ Transplantation would facilitate the establishment of desensitisation and KPD programmes to optimise living kidney transplantation in Qatar.
Successful implementation of these programmes will invariably require resources and expertise and in return, it will ensure that maximum number of LKDs achieve their noble ambition.
The study highlights that LKDs are a unique group of people who should be carefully and respectfully evaluated to determine their suitability for donation.
As per the study, HMC offers a culturally and linguistically tailored living kidney transplant programme that focuses on protecting the rights and best interests of the LKDs. The programme’s legal and policy framework prohibits organ commercialism while providing a safe, supportive, and compassionate environment for those who come forward.
The study also points out that incidence of dialysis therapy for end-stage renal disease in Qatar has increased from 82 per million population in 2013 to 104 in 2016. The increasing incidence of end-stage kidney disease in Qatar has led to growing demand for donor kidneys.
The deceased donor kidney programme has yet to achieve its full potential. Although many of the barriers to deceased donor transplantation related to legislation and infrastructure have been overcome, unfavourable public attitudes toward deceased organ donation still prevail, leading to desperately low consent rates for organ donation.
Hence, living kidney donation has been widely adopted as an appropriate alternative. The reliance on living kidney donors however, raises a number of social, ethical, and legal concerns surrounding informed consent, voluntarism, psychosocial evaluation, perioperative care, and long-term follow-up of the donors. Many of these concerns become heightened in a multicultural, multilingual society such as Qatar, the study says."

Organ donation in Qatar

Here's a story from Al Jazeera:
Finding organ donors among Qatar's Muslim community
The Qatari government offers a series of incentives to those who donate their organs.

"In late 2012, the head of HMC's Organ Transplant Committee, Dr. Yousuf al-Masalamani, told the local Al Arab newspaper that expatriates made up 99 percent of people on Qatar's donor registry.

A report by Doha News last year said that of 20,000 new donor registrants that summer, less than 1,000 were Arab, including Qatari nationals.

Yosri said that superstitions and misunderstandings about religious opinions on the matter were behind low sign-up rates among those of Arab origin or Muslim faith.

"Some people believe that by signing up to give their organs after death, they are tempting fate and they will die … That's silly, obviously nobody is going to die before their time," Yosri told Al Jazeera, adding many were unaware of religious edicts encouraging the practise.

"I give most Muslims, who are unsure, a leaflet containing a fatwa by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and the next day they've made their mind up and they're telling me they want to donate," Yosri said, referring to a religious decree by the Qatar-based Egyptian religious scholar, widely followed in Muslim-majority countries.
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"Beyond religious arguments, the Qatari government offers a series of incentives for those who donate their organs. Living donors, who give parts of their liver or a kidney, benefit from comprehensive medical insurance for life, discounted plane tickets and compensation for loss of income during medical procedures.

"Families of deceased donors are given social care and support, as well as financial help to cover the cost of transferring the body to their home country.