The problem was solved after several donated organs were lost to patients in Croatia.
Several donated organs from abroad, offered to Croatia through the Eurotransplant network, had to be refused due to the inability of aircraft to land on Zagreb’s Franjo Tuđman Airport at night during the several first months after its opening, reports Večernji List on January 22, 2018.
The information has been confirmed by doctors, a patient who was supposed to receive one of the organs and the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Health unofficially stated that the most important thing was that this troubling situation had been resolved and that it could no longer happen today. It was fixed after several doctors contacted the Ministry of Health, which then launched into action together with the Ministry of Transport. The Ministry of Health did not want to disclose how many organs had to be rejected.
The problems with the night-time operations at the new airport first became public last June, when a plane from Dubrovnik wanted to return to Zagreb due to bad weather, but since it was not possible to receive it after midnight, it was redirected to Rome. The story was the focus of media attention for days since the new airport was a huge investment and is the only Croatian airport that should be open 24 hours a day. The incident was followed by a series of denials and various interpretations of rules, but in the end, the Civil Aviation Agency identified the airport as the main culprit.
It turned out that the largest airport in Croatia could not receive all types of aircraft after 10 p.m., but also that it was not precisely defined which types of aircraft it must be able to receive at night. The trade unions alleged that the reason was the company’s cost-cutting drive, which significantly reduced the number of employees. However, at the time there were no reports that donated organs had to be rejected.
The Ministry of Health is the only institution which knows how many organs were rejected during the first few critical months after the opening of the new airport, but it has so far refused to release the information. When an organ is donated from abroad, such flights are often done with the government-owned plane, which is ordinarily used by highest-ranking state officials for official travel. For example, a heart for a 4-year-old girl was recently delivered to Zagreb in this way.
According to doctors, the most critical situation is with donated hearts since, unlike kidneys, hearts have a very short timeframe during which they need to be brought to the receiving patient. In Croatia, 30 to 40 hearts are transplanted annually in two hospitals in Zagreb, the Zagreb Clinical Hospital Centre and the Dubrava Clinical Hospital.
Translated from Večernji List.
