National Transplant Organization


The National Transplant Organization is an independent coordinating agency of the Spanish Ministry of Health responsible for developing the competencies related with provision and clinical utilization of organs, tissues and cells. The agency is headed by the Secretary-General for Health and Consumer Affairs, Faustino Blanco, although the chief executive of the agency is the Director, currently Dr. Beatriz Domínguez-Gil.
The essential mission of the ONT is then to promote and facilitate donation and transplantation of organs, tissues, and cells. It also guarantees the more appropriate and correct distribution, according to the technical knowledge and equity principles, keynotes of all transplantation activity.
To carry out these tasks, it functions as a technical operative unit that adhering to the principles of cooperation, efficacy, and solidarity, fulfils its mission of coordinating the activities of donation, extraction, preservation, distribution, exchange, and transplantation of organs, tissues and cells throughout the whole Spanish Health Care System, itself distributed along the autonomous communities of Spain.
After the creation of the ONT in 1989, Spain went from 14 donors per million population to 35.1 donors pmp in 2005, 40.2 in 2015, 46,9 in 2017 and 48 donors pmp in 2018. That means, to change from ranking in intermediate-low positions in donation rates in Europe, to have by large the highest rate not just in Europe, but also worldwide.