A Roundtable on “Organ donation and transplantation in Bulgaria - medical, legal and social issues” was held at the National Assembly. The forum was organized by the Parliamentary Committee on Health, the Executive Agency for Transplantation and the “Bulgarian Patients' Forum” Federation.

Organ donation as an act poses many questions of a different spectrum both to the society at large and to each individual person, said the National Assembly President Tsetska Tsacheva in her address to the participants in the discussion, read out by the Chairperson of the Health Committee, Dr. Daniela Daritkova. The address highlighted the crucial importance of the debate on the topic. In her words, serious as well as thorough debate should be held on the currently effective legislation and the possible amendments to it, on the development of donor bases and transplantations in the country and the possibilities for optimizing the organization of the donation process.

The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Dr. Daniela Daritkova, stressed the need for action to meet public needs. Except for organ transplants, it is key to also talk about tissue and cell donation, Dr. Daniela Daritkova said. The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Health Committee expressed her expectations that the debate on this topic be crowned with legislative decisions useful for the Bulgarian patients.

According to Dr. Vanyo Sharkov, Deputy Minister of Health, in Bulgaria we have exceptional doctors who are in no way professionally inferior to their counterparts around the world. He expressed gratitude not only to the specialists who perform organ transplants, but also to those who take the hard decisions for their relatives to become donors. There is no doubt that a lot has been done in this area over the recent years and I hope that with the development of new donor centers in the country we will become increasingly better, added Dr. Vanyo Sharkov.

Among the topics discussed at the forum were the development of donor bases, the organization of donation process at hospital level, cross-donations etc.