Havana - The Cuban Minister of Public Health, José Ángel Portal, held a meeting with directors of the Ibero-American Network/Council of Donation and Transplantation, who held in Havana its nineteenth meeting, reports the Public Health Ministry website.

The meeting took place in the context of the Donation of Organs, Tissue and Transplantation. Day whose main activities Cuba hosted this year.

Donation and transplantation is an indicator of the quality of health care, and in this sense, Cuba shows favorable results, acknowledged the Network´s president, Beatriz Domínguez.

José Ángel Portal explained that amid the economic limitations that the country is going through, the National Transplant Program continues to be strengthened, and he stressed that its success is also based on compliance with ethical principles.

Representatives of almost 40 countries and from the Pan American and World Health Organizations (PAHO/WHO) gathered in Havana for the Ibero-American Network/Council of Donation and Transplantation meeting.

Dr. Antonio Enamorado, the national coordinator of the Transplant Program of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, told the Cuban news Agency that the island has a donation rate between 13 and 14 per million inhabitants, making it one of the first countries in Latin America.

Solid-organ transplants began in Cuba in 1972  with kidney transplantation.

Enamorado added that the program has never stopped and that in the mid-1980s the first heart transplant was carried out, and they were followed by liver, bone marrow and cornea transplants, among others.