Abstract
Although organ transplantation is often the only preferable treatment for end-stage organ disease, there are not many organ donors in Saudi Arabia. This cross-sectional study analyzed data from 461 subjects recruited from the western region of Saudi Arabia to explore the current public awareness, attitudes and beliefs towards organ donation. The data were collected through a self-administered validated structured questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed and compared by subjects' age and sex using appropriate statistical tests with the level of statistical significance was defined as P ≤ 0.05. The mean age of the studied 461subjects was 28.3 ± 10.9 years, of them 74.0% were females and 26.0% were males. The study findings revealed that 73.5% of the studied subjects were willing to donate their organs with no significant differences between the studied males and females, although only 4.6% of them reported to have a donation card. Religion, money, and age of the recipient appeared to have no role in their willing of organ donation. The majority of the participants knew well the organ which can be donated; although 64.5% of them have no knowledge about the regulations and legislation of organ donation. The participants have also believed that governmental incentives in the form of monetary and health treatment for donor family and awards would be effective in promoting organ donation in the country. A considerable proportion of respondents in this study were willing to donate their organs, in which religion and financial reasons were not factors. The observed low level of knowledge about regulations and legislations necessitates more efforts to spread awareness about such important issues. Future representative national studies are needed before any generalization can be assumed.
Highlights
We aimed for this study to explore the current public awareness, attitudes and beliefs towards organ donation in Western region of Saudi Arabia
The study findings revealed that 73.5% of the studied subjects were willing to donate their organs with no significant differences between the studied males (72.5%) and females (74.1%)
Younger age group (≤ 40 years) was significantly more willing to donate their organ (61.2%) compared older age group (49.3%). This rate appeared higher than that observed in a recent Saudi study [13] where 66.7% of the study respondents were willing to donate an organ and this rate was decreased to 42.8% among the rural respondents, and similar low willing rate was reported in the previous Saudi studies. [14,15,16] The observed high rate in our study could be attributed to the high university education rate (86.1%) among the study participants
Summary
Organ transplantation is often the only preferable treatment for end-stage organ disease, which means replacing the failing recipient’s organ with a healthy one from a donor, and result in terms of a long-term survival benefit with positive quality of life improvement. [1] As medicine advances, many organ are commonly transplanted such as heart, kidney, liver and other vital organ. [2] The number of donated organ remain very low which lead to limited supply capacity for those who are in the waiting list for organ transplantation which continues to overwhelmingly grow everyday throughout the world. [3] Organ and/or tissue transplantation could be within the same person’s body which known as autograft, or between two subjects of the same species which known as allograft. [4] Allograft can either be from a living or cadaveric source. [4]Organ donation rates have traditionally been expressed as donors per million of population (pmp), by far Spain has the highest organ donation rate in the world with 31.5 pmp. [1] As medicine advances, many organ are commonly transplanted such as heart, kidney, liver and other vital organ. [5] Latin America and Saudi Arabia have a low organ donation rate (2-4 pmp). The Saudi center for organ transplantation (SCOT) was established in 1984, with adopted Strategies of the SCOT that include opinion surveys and/or research conduction, distribution of donation cards, public debates, public. [9] To date, little public opinion surveys and researches have been done on the awareness, attitudes and beliefs about organ donation in Saudi Arabia. We aimed for this study to explore the current public awareness, attitudes and beliefs towards organ donation in Western region of Saudi Arabia
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