Cho Ray Hospital, the leading public hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has opened an organ transplant coordination unit to fairly distribute and expand the country’s severely limited supply of organs. Dr. Du Thi Ngoc Thu, the new head of the unit, said their job is to receive organ donations and distribute them to patients in need equitably. The unit has distributed leaflets to families of the hospital’s patients and the public at large to encourage organ donation.

Thu said that Vietnam’s hospitals started performing organ transplants in 1992 and have helped around 1,000 patients, although some 6,000 patients remain in need. Around 1,500 patients are currently awaiting new livers, but only 46 have received one; 11 heart transplants and one pancreatic transplant have been done.

Dr. Tran Ngoc Sinh, a urologist and consultant at Cho Ray, said poor donation remains Vietnam’s biggest obstacle to saving patients in need of transplants. He said current donations come mostly from the families of patients who can only donate portions of their livers or kidneys.Around five patients succumb to brain death or cardiac arrest at the hospital,every day, mostly due to traffic accidents. But the hospital has only received donations from seven brain-dead patients since 2008, which were used to save 13 others.