The German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO) released some concerning numbers on organ donors in the country for 2017, showing that last year saw the lowest number of participants in at least 20 years. With only 9.7 organ donors per one million inhabitants, Germany finds itself with one of the worst organ donation programs in Europe.
There were only 797 organ donation registrations in Germany in 2017, which puts the country far away from addressing the more than 10,000 seriously ill patients currently on the waiting list for new organs.
Germany has long had a problem promoting the organ donation sign-up process, despite investing more than €100 million ($120 million) on it last year alone. It has been reported that more than two-thirds of Germans are willing to become donors, yet only a third have managed to sign up. Unlike in the United States where most DMVs encourage sign-up when getting a driver’s license, Germans are mostly responsible for being independently proactive by filling out a donor card that they are expected to carry with them.
