State Support for the MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE

The Prime Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, has received patients today, who are on the waiting list for organ transplantation and have been included in the mission of raising awareness of the donorship importance through the campaign the MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFEin recent months.

Seven patients from the waiting list for a new organ pointed out the problems of all those to whom a new organ is the only salvation and presented to the Prime Minister the need for passing a new Law on Transplantation of Human Organs for treatment purposes, which brings a novelty – presumed consent for all adult citizens of the Republic of Serbia.

The Prime Minister Vučić has announced also his personal support to the new law because, as he said, the fact that we have only 3 donors per million inhabitants indicates that current measures have not given the desired results.

’You know that I always insist that we should compare ourselves to people who are better than us. Unfortunately, a large number of countries are better than us in this segment. At this moment, there are 800 people on the waiting list of the most important calls in life for them, and as few as 10 percent of them receive a life-saving organ. Therefore, in addition to personal support to the campaign, I think that Serbia urgently needs to adopt the new law, which will improve the transplantation program’, Aleksandar Vučić pointed out.

The Prime Minister of Serbia has emphasized that he will encourage members of the Assembly of the City of Belgrade and members of the Government of Serbia to support the MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE campaign by their own example and sign a donor card.

’I understand the concern, anxiety and race against time of each of these people with whom I have spoken today and I know that this is the problem of hundreds of others to whom a new organ will save their life’ – the Prime Minister stated. ’As a responsible society, we need to provide conditions and increase the number of saved lives also in this manner. It should be a personal mission of each of us’, the Prime Minister Vučić concluded following the discussion with patients, representatives of Hemofarm and the Ministry of Health.

The Prime Minister of Serbia thanked the Chief Executive Officer of Hemofarm, Ronald Seeliger, for this campaign, as well as for the significant support for improving the quality of life in the local community and creation of public-private partnerships aimed at strengthening the services in the health care system of Serbia.

The CEO of Hemofarm has pointed out that Hemofarm Foundation as a partner of the Ministry of Health has been contributing to better understanding of this problem through a number of activities and increasing the number of donors for two years, but it is clear that a systemic solution should be found in order to achieve the goal.

’The first specific success of the MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE campaign is most certainly the declaration of June 6^th, as the National Day of Donors’, Ronald Seeliger stated, who is the owner of two donor cards, a German and Serbian one.

Emphasizing that sometimes, unfortunately, years go by without the most important call in life enabling organ transplantation, Seeliger said that Serbia as a humane and responsible society must not allow that.

Hemofarm Foundation campaign, the MOST IMPORTANT CALL IN LIFE, continues with a number of activities, lectures and social initiatives that will include representatives of the public and political life, and shall remind us that one donor can help saving as many as four lives, and it is 20 times more likely that any of us can become a recipient rather than organ donor.