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Photo: Fundación DTI.
 27.01.2021

The ODISSeA project has made great progress to improve organ donation performance in Southeast Asia

The ODISSeA project, led by the University of Barcelona with the participation of the DTI Foundation – Donation & Transplantation Institute, based in the Barcelona Science Park, closes 2020 with a very positive balance in its mission to promote highly specialized training in organ donation for health professionals in the Southeast Asian (SeA) region. 

The results of the first year of development of the project, co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, are very satisfactory, despite the challenges caused by COVID-19, since many of the teachers and participants have been key actors in the fight against the pandemic.

On 7 January 2020, the Postgraduate Programme in Organ Donation started with 303 participants from Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines and Thailand. As of December 2020, a total of 11 webinars were presented by the international experts. In addition, 4 face-to-face and 12 virtual local seminars had been held by the SeA universities.

During the summer of 2020 the art contest “Inspire us through your Creativity” was held. When it was closed on July 15th, 14 art pieces were received from Southeast Asian and European artists. The finalists were awarded with free access to the 1st edition of DTI-International Summer School, with 5 live sessions on organ donation and transplantation. In addition, the winner, Dr Dianne Vi Mosqueda, will receive a digital version of the Transplant Procurement Management Manual’s latest edition.

On September 4th, 2020 the Midterm meeting of the ODISSeA project was held successfully with close to 40 consortium members joined from Spain, Croatia, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, and Thailand via webinar format. The meeting also had the participation of Dr Francisco Sarmiento from the Philippine Network for Organ Sharing (PhilNOS), national authority from the Philippines, an affiliated institution involved in ODISSeA. During the event, the participants reviewed the results and progress achieved during the first half of the project; strengthened the commitment with ODISSeA; and they determined the objectives and the actions programmed until the end of the initiative.

A pioneer initiative to improve organ donation in Southeast Asian countries

ODISSeA (Organ Donation Innovative Strategies for Southeast Asia) is the result of the cooperation of fourteen organizations from seven countries. The main objective is to create a specialized academic program on organ donation in 8 universities in Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand.

From the European side, the University of Barcelona is the leader and organizer of the project, together with DTI Foundation (Spain). In the project also take part: the University of Bologna (Italy), the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and the company Dinamia (Spain).

This is one of the initiatives aiming to improve the health culture in the field of donation and transplantation internationally which have been promoted by Martí Manyalich, lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB, transplant advisor in Hospital Clinic de Barcelona and president of the DTI Foundation – Donation & Transplantation Institute, located in the Barcelona Science Park.

ODISSeA is led by Martí Manyalich, adjunct lecturer of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB and president of DTI Foundation (Photo: DTI Foundation).

The origin of the project comes from the need for a specialized training program that builds adequate knowledge, skills and attitude in organ donation to improve the number of well-trained specialists that will efficiently coordinate the process of organ donation in the SeA countries.

The postgraduate academic program will provide a common framework to develop a student-centered lifelong learning strategy corresponding to highly specialized knowledge in organ donation.

» For further information: ODISSeA project website [+]

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