Extract from The Japan Times
August 18 2024
JAPAN – Japan, it seems often faces difficulties in developing an infrastructure to enable people to receive transplanted organs. In June 2024, The Yomuiri Shimbun reported that three universities planned to start performing heart transplants, a development expected to help ease the strain on the medical transplant system. The Yomiuri Shimbun also reported that:
“[t]he move comes as the number of organs provided from brain-dead donors increases. It also follows a recent survey that found medical institutions had declined 16 heart donations from such donors in 2023 due to a shortage of manpower and hospital beds.”
Now an attempt is being made to improve the number of kidney transplants being performed in Japan. As Tomoko Otake reported in The Japan Times:
“Currently, over 14,000 people in Japan are waiting for a kidney transplant — by far the largest group when classified according to organ — with an average waiting period of 14 years and nine months. That compares with an average wait time of three to five years among 90,000 patients in need of kidney transplants in the United States.
In addition, some 350,000 people in Japan are on dialysis due to renal problems, which require them to undergo hours of treatment at a medical institution three times a week. If they can receive a functioning kidney, their quality of life would improve significantly, experts say.”
The Meiji University-driven firm used cells of pigs developed for xenotransplantation by U.S. startup eGenesis it imported in September last year. To suppress immune responses, the cell’s 10 genes were re-engineered.
In late October 2023, Japan marked the 1,000th case of organ donations from brain-dead people since the country’s organ transplant law came into force in 1997, the Japan Organ Transplant Network reported.
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