Overview:

By 2005, human organ trafficking, commercialization, and transplant tourism had become a prominent and pervasive influence on transplantation therapy. The most common source of organs was impoverished people in India,Pakistan, Egypt, and the Philippines, deceased organ donors in Colombia, and executed prisoners in China. In response, in May 2008, The Transplantation Society and the International Society of Nephrology developed the Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism consisting of a preamble, a set of principles, and a series of proposals. Promulgation of the Declaration of Istanbul and the formation of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group to promote and uphold its principles have demonstrated that concerted, strategic, collaborative, and persistent actions by professionals can deliver tangible changes. Over the past 5 years, the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group organized and encouraged cooperation among professional bodies and relevant international, regional, and national governmental organizations, which has produced significant progress in combating organ trafficking and transplant tourism around the world. At a fifth anniversary meeting in Qatar in April 2013, the DICG took note of this progress and set forth in a Communiqué´ a number of specific activities and resolved to further engage groups from many sectors in working toward the Declaration’s objectives.

Biography:

Dr. Gabriel Danovitch received his medical degree from St Bartholomew’s Hospital of the University of London. He completed his residency training in London and in Bersheeba, Israel and his nephrology fellowship training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He served on the faculty at Albert Einstein and then directed the nephrology unit at Soroka Hospital in Israel. He currently holds the John J. Kuiper Chair in Nephrology and Renal Transplantation at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with the academic rank of Distinguished Professor of Medicine. He is the longtime Medical Director of its renowned Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program: one of the largest and most successful in the US. Dr. Danovitch has devoted his recent career to various aspects of clinical kidney transplantation. He has published over 180 original articles and 50 book chapters. He has mentored a generation of transplant physicians and leads the  UCLA AST/ASN kidney transplant medicine fellowships since its inception. Dr. Danovitch is an internationally recognized authority on transplant immunosuppression, clinical transplant care, transplant ethics and public policy. He has served on the board of the American Society of Transplantation (AST) and the United Network for Organ Donation (UNOS) and is the past Chair of its International Relations committee. He is a founder member of the Custodian Group of the Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism (DICG) and now serves as its Co-Chair. He is Medical Director of OneLegacy, the organ procurement agency of Southern California. His classic textbook, the “Handbook of Kidney Transplantation”, now in its fifth edition and translated into five languages, has become required reading for those entering the field.