Organ transplant crisis in Moldova: Half of families refuse donation, while over 100 patients await transplants
In 2025, around half of the families of brain-dead patients refused to donate their loved ones’ organs for transplantation. Meanwhile, more than 100 patients in the Republic of Moldova are waiting for a compatible organ. According to the Transplant Agency, the family refusal rate was about 50% last year, although it has varied significantly in recent years.
“Donation refusal varies from year to year. The lowest recorded refusal rate was 33%, and the highest was approximately 70%. Last year, the donation refusal rate was about 50%”, Grigore Romanciuc, director of the Transplant Agency, told Teleradio-Moldova.
The need for organ donation is all the greater, given that 105 patients are currently waiting for a kidney or liver transplant. Of these, 38 need a kidney, and 67 are waiting for a liver transplant.
A liver transplant costs over 1 million lei
During the current year, surgeons in the Republic of Moldova performed 12 organ transplants – six kidney and six liver. For comparison, during the entire year 2025, 16 such transplants were performed.
Also, in 2025, 28 cornea transplants and approximately 400 tissue transplants were performed.
The system's capacity to perform transplants directly depends on the number of brain-dead donors. If last year, 14 donors were registered in total, since the beginning of this year the balance has already reached 10 cases.
"*The main obstacles are the lack of medical staff, especially transplant coordinators. Likewise, one of the problems is informing the population about the need for organ donation. In general, the population is aware of the need for donation, but more information about the need for donation is needed," explained Romanciuc.
Liver transplantation is the most expensive intervention of this type financed from the mandatory health insurance funds. The cost of such a transplant amounts to 1,161,849 lei, according to data from the National Health Insurance Company.
The cost of a kidney transplant is 265,387 lei, while a cornea transplant costs 22,910 lei, excluding the cost of the cornea. For an amniotic membrane transplant on the ocular surface, 18,650 lei are allocated.
In the case of organ transplants from living donors, the cost of a liver transplant is 219,136 lei, and of a kidney transplant - 41,099 lei.
Little boy not even two years old, the youngest patient
In the last 10 years, transplant interventions have saved over 200 lives in the Republic of Moldova. More precisely, according to the Transplant Agency, over 110 people were saved by kidney transplant, and another approximately 90 - by liver transplant.
Also during this period, the total balance of interventions included over 3,200 transplants of various tissues, including 28 corneas, with approximately 400 such tissue procedures being performed last year alone.
The youngest patient who underwent a transplant intervention in the Republic of Moldova was a child of 1 year and 7 months, and the oldest - 66 years old, at the time of the transplant. As a rule, the number of men who benefit from transplants is higher than that of women, but the differences are not significant.
The Transplant Center within the Republican Clinical Hospital "Timofei Moșneaga" remains the main pillar of the system. A single organ harvesting and transplantation operation requires the combined efforts of over 40 specialists in fields such as intensive care, surgery, urology, nephrology and hepatology.
“The number of specialists is not enough”, the director of the Agency stated for Teleradio-Moldova.
For this year, the authorities have set themselves the objective of increasing the number of organ transplants to 20. At the same time, there are plans to expand transplant programs to other hospitals, by creating a national coordination system.
“At present, one of the biggest challenges is the creation and development, in the Republic of Moldova, of the National Coordination Network, as well as the strengthening of the Coordination Service”, said Romanciuc.
For 2026, 16.6 million lei have been provided in the mandatory health insurance funds to carry out 132 transplants.
Transplant operations are fully financed from the mandatory health insurance funds. These interventions can benefit all insured persons who have medical indications and are on the waiting list.
Currently, stem cell, pancreas or intestine transplants are not performed in the Republic of Moldova. According to the Transplant Agency, one of the reasons is the high costs of these interventions.
Moldovan patients who need interventions unavailable in the country can benefit from transplantation in countries such as Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Romania or Turkey.
