MADRID, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Thursday that despite the ongoing coronavirus crisis, doctors were able to perform 234 organ transplant operations between March 13 and May 19.
The minister explained that the organs came from 127 donors and that in the cases of 30 of the operations, it had been necessary to go ahead with the operations to save the patients' lives.
One of the operations was a heart transplant carried out just over a week ago in Barcelona's Val de Hebron hospital on an adolescent who had previously recovered from COVID-19.
At the Spanish Congress, Illa admitted the number of organ transplants had fallen during the crisis, but stressed that because of COVID-19 every operation had been "carried out in a situation of enormous complexity."
The minister also thanked the Spanish people for their continued willingness to donate organs and announced that the health ministry was working on a "post-COVID" plan to help the number of transplants "return to their former level."
Around 5,300 transplant operations were made in Spain in 2019, with a level of 114 transplants and 48 organ donors per million inhabitants, the highest level in the world. Enditem
