During the first two weeks of May, IAOD President, Fouad Beydoun, traveled to Lebanon and Qatar to discuss organ donation and health issues affecting the Middle Eastern community. He was also a member of the Breast Cancer Symposium featuring members of the Detroit Medical Center staff that traveled to the conference with Dr. Beydoun. Among the other attendees on the trip was IAOD Board of Trustees Chairman, Tarik Daoud.

DOHA: The shortage of donors for kidneys, liver, heart and other organ transplants is a global phenomenon with one patient dying every 16 minutes while another victim added every 15 minutes, Dr Fouad Beydoun, President and Chief Executive, International Association for Organ Donation (IAOD), said here yesterday

In an interview with The Peninsula yesterday, Dr Beydoun, who is attending the Conference on 21st Century Approach in Treatment and Prevention of Breast Cancer, said, the shortage of donors and organs was a worldwide problem and in the US alone, about 92,000 patients were awaiting organs for transplant, mainly kidneys and liver. The IAOD, he said, helps prepare patients, donors and their families for the transplant procedure through education. He said, in the US itself, the waiting list for an organ for transplant ranged between two and seven years. "We are now encouraging live donors since the patient can die by the time an organ is available. Such a live donor should preferably be from the patient's family," he added. Hundreds of patients in the US, he said, were also awaiting bone marrow for transplant.

Dr Beydoun, who is also the vice president of the Detroit Medical Centre, Wayne State University, is heading a team of 12 physicians who will examine and treat women afflicted with breast cancer as part of the conference. The team, during their stay in Qatar, he said, hopes to learn from their counterparts at the Hamad Medical Corporation while imparting knowledge on latest, sophisticated means of treatment of breast cancer to local oncologists. "We would also like to learn from the rest of the Arab world," he added. Dr Beydoun gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the conference, held at the InterContinental Doha yesterday evening.