Greetings

It is our pleasure to announce that the international conference, World Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation, will be held at the Osaka International Convention Center on Saturday, September 20, 2008. It will be hosted by the Japan Society for Transplantation, and co-hosted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and the World Health Organization (WHO). The international inaugural conference was held in October 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland on behalf of the European countries followed by the 2006 conference held in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the Latin American countries, and the 2007 conference held in Kuwait for the Middle Eastern countries.

The main purpose of the conference is to promote the organ donation, within each country, from brain-dead donors. Japan will host the forthcoming conference as the representative of the Asian region. The conference organization will take place at Fairtransplant, a foundation established in Geneva by WHO and will be carried out by governmental agencies from each country and by individuals involved in organ transplantation.

In reality, Japan has had far fewer cases of organ donation from brain-dead donors than most other countries, and to improve the situation, an amendment to the Organ Transplant Law and the establishment of a system to promote organ donation on a regional basis have been called for. Already, the Donor Action Program has been introduced in Japan, and this has contributed to a slow but steady increase in the number of organ donation cases in recent years. The promotion of organ donation requires extensive implementation of grass-root activities within a society in addition to the amendment of the Organ Transplant Law. For this reason, it is absolutely vital to educate the public and increase the general awareness of the significance of organ donation and transplantation. We believe that the World Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation will provide an ideal opportunity for doing this. We also hope that in-depth discussions will take place and that appropriate directions for future efforts will become apparent during the conference.

The forthcoming conference will consist of two parts. During the morning of September 20, a symposium will be held in which representatives from Asian countries and regions will report on their organ donation situations. In the afternoon, a roundtable discussion is scheduled on the topic of "Methods for Encouraging Organ Donations from Brain-dead Donors," and efforts undertaken in various countries in this regard will be presented. In addition, representatives from WHO and the Transplantation Society in charge of ethical issues, and of the Asian region, will exchange ideas in order to identify tasks which should be implemented in each country in the future.

What is the significance of Japan’s hosting this international conference? Actually, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about Japan’s attitude toward organ transplantation: because of the excessive attention paid to the cases of Japanese patients traveling abroad for organ transplantation, numerous countries unjustly blame Japan for having not made sufficient efforts to promote organ donation domestically. We want to use this conference as an opportunity to account for the difficult circumstances—circumstances under which those involved with organ donation in Japan have been making their utmost efforts. We believe we should make a proactive response to the criticism, and should send accurate information to the rest of the world. At the same time, we should endeavor to increase the awareness of the necessity to promote organ donation in our own society. For these reasons, this international conference is highly significant.

We have announced our hosting of the World Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation in Osaka in 2008 before, during the Kuwait conference in November 2007 and the Congress of the Asian Society of Transplantation in December 2007; at the same time, we have been publicizing the conference by means of posters and DVD screenings. Calls for participation in the conference have also been made through presentations, posters, and DVD screenings during the International Summit on Transplant Tourism and Organ Trafficking in Istanbul in April 2008, the American Transplant Congress in Toronto in May 2008, and the International Congress of the Transplantation Society in Sydney in August 2008.

Needless to say, however, the success of the forthcoming conference depends largely on the cooperation of members of the Japan Society for Transplantation. We hope that many JST members will take part in the discussions about this conference and promulgate the outcome of those discussions to the public and to governmental officials. We look forward to your participation in the conference and your contribution to a successful and productive outcome. More detailed information about the conference will be provided by the Japan Society for Transplantation at a later date.

Through our joint efforts, we can be sure that the upcoming World Day for Organ Donation and Transplantation will be a great success.

Satoshi Teraoka
President
The Japan Society for Transplantation
(Department of Surgery, Kidney Center, and the Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering & Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University)