Five to six leading hospitals of Vietnam will cooperate with each other to carry out lung and pancreas transplantation, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien said during a visit to the Vietnam-Germany Hospital in Hanoi on Saturday.

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Minister Tien visited the hospital to examine two patients who had undergone heart and lung transplants, in which the organs were donated by those suffering from brain death at Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

During the call, the minister said the leading Vietnamese hospitals for organ transplantation, such as the Vietnam-Germany Hospital, Cho Ray Hospital, Hue Central Hospital, and Military Hospital No. 103, have successfully transplanted hearts, kidneys, livers, and corneas.

The next objective is to transplant the lungs and pancreas, which will need the coordination of five or six leading hospitals, she said.

The Central Lung Hospital in Hanoi is currently chairing a national project on lung transplant in Vietnam, Minister Tien added.

Lung transplantation will open up opportunities for treating patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which is becoming more common in Vietnam, especially among those having a history of smoking or affected by environmental pollution or suffering lung cancer at an early stage, according to Nguyen Tien Quyet, former director of the Vietnam-Germany Hospital and a leading expert on organ transplantation.

Vietnam has mastered the techniques of heart, liver, kidney, and cornea transplantation, the minister said.

The two patients who had heart and liver transplants are recovering very well at the Vietnam-Germany Hospital, she added.

According to the national center for organ transplant and donor coordination, currently over 90 percent of organs for transplant recipients in the world are from brain-dead donors.

But in Vietnam, the majority of donated organs are from living people, bringing about several issues including the illegal sale of organs.

The center is building a network to update information about donors and recipients for transplantation, which can cover people from Vietnam and the two neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia.

The network will help notify the recipients if there are organ donors and connect them immediately when the donors have appropriate health indicators.

Currently there are thousands of people waiting for organ transplantation, the center said, adding that the number of donated organs are limited, causing their trafficking to be quite common.

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