National day on organ and fabric donation and transplantation: choosing to donate is easy how to pronounce a yes, and has an invaluable value.
Changing the world must not take it effort. It can be simple as if to say yes. In the National day for the donation of organs and fabricswhich is celebrated today, 11 April 2025, it is important to reflect on the value of the declaration of consent to the donation of organs when renewing the identity card. Because, if on the one hand the donations of organs and fabrics in our country have never gone better than this, on the other the opposition to donations do not mention decreased.
More “no” than last year. According to the data of the National Transplant Center, at this moment in the Transplant Information System (SIT), the platform that records the declarations of will on the donation of organs and fabrics after death issued by the citizens at the ASL, Aido and Municipalities, 22.3 million declarations are filed: 15.5 million consents and 6.8 million oppositions.
The no to organ donation, however, are growing: from 1 January to 31 March 2025 they climbed of +3.4% Compared to 2024, while abstention decreased by 0.6%. Meanwhile, there are about 8,250 people on the waiting list for a transplant (especially of kidney – 5,972 – then liver, heart, lung, pancreas, intestine).
Some resistance. “In the hospitals of our country, many transplants and samples of organs have never been made as in the last year, thanks to the generosity of the many donors, while in the municipalities they do not mention to decrease our fellow citizens who choose to say” no “to the donation”, explains Giuseppe Feltrin, director of the National Transplant Center.
The node of the undecided. In the first quarter of 2025, 60.3% of citizens who expressed declarations of will on the donation of organs at the time of renewing the electronic identity card gave their consent to the withdrawal of organs after death, while 39.7% chose to oppose. There was however A very high percentage of abstentions: Among the people who renewed the document in the first 90 days of the year, there were 680,000 – 41.6% – who have not expressed any will on the donation of organs and fabrics.
We can make the difference. “On the one hand, our transplantation network improves from a clinical-scientific point of view and from an organizational point of view, and is able to identify an increasing number of potential donors, also thanks to the firm heart donation,” says Feltrin. «On the other hand, however, especially in some age groups, many people struggle to declare their will to donate as they renew the document and end up registering a” no “which, although revocable, In the future, it could risk affecting our ability to find organs in negative compatible for the many patients waiting for transplant.
A fact on which we must work is that of perplexed, people who probably did not correctly arrive the message on the value of the gift. And this will be one of our commitments ».
The age groups in which the most “no” are recorded are those of the over 60 and 18-30 years. Assents are instead more widespread among 40-50 year olds. On the occasion of the donation day, and to convince the undecided, the National Transplant Center launched a social campaign entitled “He said yes”to remind everyone that choosing to donate the organs costs nothing and save their lives to those who are waiting for a transplant.
A choice of civilizations. The Italian transplant network is also a point of reference for donations of fabricsan aspect of which we speak less. “But these are often life -saving interventions, as in the case of skin transplant in patients with very serious burns, or in any case they change the life of those who receive them decisively, just think of those who come back to see thanks to a new cornea”, adds Feltrin.
«Anyone who decides to record their consent to the donation of the organs it automatically does it for fabricsand in this case the conditions for a withdrawal after the death are more frequently used. For this reason it is important to remember the fundamental value of the donation: it is the right time to make a choice of civilizations that costs us nothing, because it happens when we are no longer there, but that can be worth a lot for those who remain ».
