With its extraordinary announcement, the Hellenic Transplantation Organization points out that:

It is with particular surprise that we watch, in the context of the hearing of a much-lauded trial, the process of Organ Donation as well as the specialized medical personnel involved in it being brutally affected.

Mr. Andreas Iliadis, Director of the Intensive Care Unit of the P.G.N. of Rio Patras, was characterized, by a defense attorney, as a “trafficker of organs for transplantation” in a foreign country.

Apparently, the advocate does not have sufficient information and does not know that dozens of doctors are involved in the decisions and procedures of organ donation, both in the certification of the brain death of the donor, and in the removal and transplantation of the organs.

Additionally, the defense attorney does not know that the donation of organs, after certification of brain death and the necessary consent of the donor’s family, is coordinated by the Hellenic Transplantation Organization (HTO) alone.

EOM offers, based on strict rules and protocols, the organs to transplant units in our country or in Italy, with which our country maintains transnational cooperation, mainly for pediatric organ transplants, which are not carried out in Greece.

Dozens of children from Greece have been transplanted in Italy with grafts from Greek or Italian donors.
The EOM, as the body responsible for the assurance of transplants and the management of every donor and every offered organ in Greece, stands by Mr. Iliadis, as does every doctor, who considers that his medical duty does not end with the loss of a patient , but it continues in the salvation of other people.

Mr. Iliadis enjoys the absolute respect and appreciation of both the transplant medical community of the country, as well as the families of the children who became organ donors, as the doctor who offered a palliative outlet to the loss of their child.

Today, Mr. Iliadis and the staff of the Rio ICU, as well as the Idea of ​​Organ Donation, are under a relentless attack with baseless arguments that seem to stem from misinformation and possibly conspiracy.

In a period of time, when all of society, all of medicine, the journalistic community and the country’s political class, have practically supported Organ Donation and actions are being taken that aim to get our country out of the decades-long transplant quagmire, which deprives the Greek citizens the gift of transplantation.

EOM calls on justice officials to protect the institution of Organ Donation and the prosecution witness from disorientation attacks. The suspension of initiatives by ICU doctors regarding the initiation of donation procedures will directly cost patients’ lives.