After they have died, 360 Dutch people donated one or more organs last year. That is an increase of 23 percent compared to 2023. In total they donated 1,066 organs. This is apparent from Monday published figures of the Dutch Transplantation Foundation (NTS). The number of tissue donors rose in 2024 with 232 deceased people to 2,775.
According to the foundation, the increase is due to innovation in the medical sector and to the donor law amended in 2021. According to NTS director Naomi Nathan, organs can recently be better investigated and inspected for transplantation through a new rinse method. The quality of the organs would therefore become more visible, so that the criteria of who can be donor can be expanded.
Nathan: “We see that this can be transplanted more organs.” Thanks to the new method, the number of heart transplants in particular increased sharply: from around 40 heart transplants per year between 2016 and 2021 to 79 in 2024.
‘No objection’
In addition, Dutch people who have not entered anything in the donor register is automatically organ and tissue donor. The register contains the names of those people ‘no objection to organ donation’. Previously, Dutch people who had not filled in were not a donor. Partly due to this expanded law, but also because more than one million extra Dutch people decided to cross ‘yes’ after the introduction, the number of potential donors increased.
The latest figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) showed that on January 1, 2024, nearly 5 million Dutch people gave permission for organ donation. In addition, 3.3 million Dutch people were at ‘no objection’ at that time and 1.5 million Dutch people preferred that family would make the choice upon death.