Vietnam should come up with aneffective awareness strategy to increase understanding of all aspects oforgan donation in order to have more people become donors, experts say.

According to the Health Ministry, nearly 300 organtransplants are performed each year in the country while around 500,000people nationwide need transplants of various kinds.

Dr Tran Ngoc Sinh of the Cho Ray Hospital in HCM City saidthat Vietnam had around 6,000 patients suffering from chronic kidneyfailure, and 300,000 blinded by diseases relating to the cornea.

However, the very small number of organ donors made it difficult toprovide these people with life-saving or life-enhancing transplants, hesaid.

A recent survey on organ donation conductedamong 2,000 people in Vietnam showed that more than 50 percent ofpeople did not want to become donors.

Thirty-fivepercent agreed to become donors after their death and only 15 percentsaid they would donate whenever other people needed their help.

Religious beliefs and low awareness were main reasons for many people not wanting to become organ donors, Sinh said.

The first kidney transplant was successfully conducted in Vietnam in1992 and 12 years later, local doctors performed the first liver graftsurgery.

Early this month, doctors at the HueCentral Hospital in Thua Thien-Hue Province successfullyperformed a heart transplant, the first such operation performed solelyby Vietnamese doctors.

The previous successful heart transplant was performed last year in Hanoi with the assistance of Taiwanese surgeons.

As of last November, 17 patients had received kidney transplants, 15had undergone liver transplants and one patient had a heart transplantwith organs taken from brain dead donors.

Vietnampassed a law relating to organ donation in 2006, under whichVietnamese citizens aged 18 and above have the right to donate theirtissue or organs.

The law offers several incentivesfor donors including free health care services, health insurance andpriority for transplants if needed. This year, the Ministry of Health isset to issue five more decrees involving organ transplant. It will alsoset up a national organ transplant association and a co-ordinationcentre.

Prof Nghiem Dao Dai, former head ofAllegheny General Hospital 's Organ Transplant Ward in the US , saidin a workshop held earlier that the shortage of organ donors was not asituation particular to Vietnam .

Dai stressedthe need for organ transplants to be a very fair and transparent processin order to remove the notion that it was a treatment that served onlythe rich people.

Prof Francis L Delmonico, chairmanof the Transplantation Society in Canada and an expert with the WorldHealth Organisation, emphasised the importance of setting up a networkof organ donors and having transparent regulations on brain deaddiagnoses to avoid patients becoming victims of organ trafficking.

He also called for legal protection to ensureܫ that peꦺople would not end up dead after agreeing to become organ donor./.