SAUDI ARABIA: Medicos, human rights group to promote organ donations

. JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Arab News), October 20, 2008 By Laura Bashraheel | Arab News The Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation (SCOT) is to create national awareness about brain death and the importance of organ donation in an effort to solve the huge backlog of patients on the waiting list for organ transplants. The list of those waiting for donors is growing day by day and at the same time there is a dearth of donors. SCOT will provide necessary medical support to the campaign. “The Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation will provide us with doctors for the campaign,” said Hajar Al-Atawi, a 20-year-old medical student at Ibn Sina National College for Medical Studies in Jeddah and the coordinator for Ibn Sina campaign group. Four medical universities are coordinating to launch this campaign simultaneously in Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. “We have King Abdulaziz University and Ibn Sina National College in Jeddah, King Saud University in Riyadh and King Faisal University in Dammam working together on the project,” Al-Atawi told Arab News. “We have set up several groups with each group having eight teams,” Al-Atawi said. This campaign is part of activities envisioned by the Standing Committee on Human Rights and Peace in Saudi Arabia (SCORP-SA), one of four standing committees of the International Federation of Medical Students Association-Saudi Arabia (IFMSA-SA) founded in 2007. SCORP deals with the problems of people with special needs, the elderly, cancer and chronic disease patients. The IFMSA is an independent, nongovernmental and nonpartisan federation of medical students’ associations around the world. Copyright: Arab News © 2003