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Italy's Higher Council of Health gives approval to Samaritan donations

Donating a kidney or part of one's liver to a stranger will be possible in Italy as well. The country's Higher Council of Health (CSS) has given its approval to Samaritan donations: that is, donations between living people who have no blood ties or other affective relationship. The decision of the scientific body of the Ministry of Health essentially confirms the positive stance of the National Bioethics Committee (CNB), but establishes some criteria to assess the donor's absolute good faith. Therefore, a careful psychological and psychiatric evaluation will be made of the Samaritan donor and of his/her family, carried out by 'third parties' and thus by people other than the specialists involved in organ harvesting and transplantation. Moreover, total privacy must be guaranteed as well as absolutely no contact between donor and beneficiary. The strict protocol aims to rule out any donor interest or illegal organ trafficking. The honorary president of the CNB, Francesco D'Agostino, and the bioethics committee of Università Cattolica had from the start declared their disagreement with this form of donation, considered to be a rather delicate issue. The CSS decision also established that the first ten Samaritan donations must be included within a national programme run by the National Transplant Centre and, in any case, will have to be used in the cross-over procedure as priority. This procedure is adopted when there are at least two pairs of people concerned, each consisting of one person awaiting a transplant and a non-compatible donor in the patient's family. If the donor of the second pair is biocompatible with the beneficiary of the other pair, or vice-versa, then the cross-over procedure can be applied. The Samaritan donation will, in any case, be taken into consideration only when donations from non-living donors or from living blood-kin donors are not possible.