"These results bespeak a well-organised system which we are trying to further upgrade," said Beroš commending the organ transplant sector as the flagship of Croatia's public healthcare.
The first liver transplant surgery at the Merkur hospital in Zagreb was performed in 1998 and since then a total of 1,772 liver transplant, 930 kidney transplant and 150 pancreas transplant surgeries have been performed.
During 2020, a year marked by the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and two devastating earthquakes, this hospital also conducted transplantation operations with 117 transplant surgeries that year alone, the minister said.
In Croatia, the transplant survival statistics show that in the first year since the operation, the survival rate is 83% and in the first five years the survival rate is about 70%, which places Croatia on a par with the best countries in the world, he added.
Doctor Branislav Kocman, who was among the initiators of the liver transplant programme in this hospital in 1997, said today that he could no longer keep record of the surgeries in which he had participated.
He also said that since 2005, the number of potential donors has risen. In 2005 and 2006, Croatia already had 13 donors per 1 million citizens, he said.
Thus, Croatia and Spain are now the top two countries in Europe in terms of organ donors per 1 million inhabitants, he added.