Free Organ Transplants Now Offered in 22 Ukrainian Hospitals — 21 More Coming Soon

Organ transplant operations in Ukraine are performed on request and free of charge for patients.

Free organ transplants are already being performed in 22 hospitals across Ukraine, with a total of 43 medical facilities expected to carry out such operations.

Health Minister Viktor Liashko, in an interview with Ukrinform, shared prospects for this area and described which types of operations have started being performed in Ukraine.

Organ Transplantation

The minister described how Ukraine has managed to advance transplantation both at the legislative level and in practice in just two years.

Viktor Liashko
Minister of Health of Ukraine

Over the past two years, domestic transplantation has moved off the dead center where it had been stuck for about three decades. Now we have 43 institutions where the Ministry of Health guarantees payment for transplant operations, and 22 of them have already begun performing such operations. For the patient they are completely free

According to the minister, Ukrainians should be confident that when necessary they will receive timely medical care via transplantation — in their own country and free of charge.

The minister also shared the current transplant tariffs, which rose this year to ensure that institution heads can pay competitive wages to the team performing the operations.:

● liver transplant from a living donor — 1,579,165 UAH (in 2020 — 971,169 UAH);

● liver transplant from a deceased donor — 1,428,734 UAH (in 2020 — 929,125 UAH);

● kidney transplant from a deceased donor — 801,071 UAH (last year — 397,884 UAH);

● kidney transplant from a living donor — 788,314 UAH (in 2020 — 357,359 UAH);

● bone marrow transplant (BMT) from an unrelated donor — 2,484,470 UAH (2020 — 1,360,141 UAH);

● BMT from a related donor —1,874,969 UAH (2020 —1,360,141 UAH).

Liashko explained that for heart transplants, centers themselves develop calculations by analyzing the experience of completed operations, and tariffs will be raised.

Viktor Liashko 
Minister of Health of Ukraine

We have competitive prices, but they are lower than in neighboring Belarus. Not to mention European countries, where priority in the queue is given to their own citizens. 

The minister also said that the tariffs include medical staff salaries, equipment upgrades and the possibility of laboratory support.

Under a government resolution, organ transplantation is free for patients, and all operations are paid to the centers from the state budget.

Moreover, the greatest demand in Ukraine is for kidney transplants, which is why there are the most centers for them. About a thousand patients a year require liver transplants, and around three hundred require heart and lung transplants.

Viktor Liashko
Minister of Health of Ukraine

As for meeting demand, we are certainly moving confidently in this direction. However, we should not forget that advanced countries took decades to reach current levels — and, by the way, still do not cover the entire demand. On the other hand, we do not need to invent a "Ukrainian transplant bicycle" — we can implement advanced global experience, bypassing the mistakes of foreign colleagues that were corrected as medical science developed. So I think that in 3-5 years it will be possible to say that transplantation has taken root in Ukraine.