BERLIN, 11 Jan. (Xinhua) -- With 955 donors in 2018, organ donation in Germany has developed positively for the first time since 2010, the German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO) announced on Friday.

In 2018, 12 people in Germany per million inhabitants chose to become a so-called non-heart beating donor (NHBOD), according to DSO.

"The current development means a first glimmer of hope for the patients on the waiting lists. However, this should not blind us to the fact that there is still a lot to do in 2019," DSO board member Alex Rahmel commented.

In international comparison, European countries such as Spain and Portugal but also the United States, where there are more than 30 donors per million, are more successful converting people into donors. Although the number of donors in Germany increased by almost 20 percent, it failed to reach the record of 1,296 organ donors in 2010.

The international agency for donor organs Eurotransplant (ET), which distributes organs between Belgium, Croatia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Germany, successfully transferred 3,113 organs to patients in 2018.

Rahmel hopes that Germany will achieve donor rates that are more similar to those of other countries, and believes that rates of 15 to 20 donors per million inhabitants in Germany would be feasible in the medium term.

On average, every German organ donor has given three seriously ill patients a new chance to live. According to DSO, around 9,400 German patients are still on the waiting list for organ transplantations. Enditem

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