‘Organ Donation Is Ongoing Charity Until Judgment Day’

JEDDAH, 16 April 2008 — Haifa Khalifa, a 42-year-old Saudi, donated her kidney to her sixty-something mother.

“Dialysis was a very tiresome experience for our mother that my siblings and I were against it at the beginning. She also has hypertension and diabetes,” Khalifa said.

Medicals tests on the woman’s children showed Khalifa had both a compatible and healthy kidney. “This was the least I could give to my mother,” she said. “She was more worried about me than I was worried at myself.”

After the tests and check-ups, the operation happened around 18 months ago with no complications or side effects.

If you ask Khalifa, donating organs — either nonessential ones like the extra kidney, or vital organs after death — is one of the most profound acts of charity.

“Why don’t I give them to those who need them in order to live a healthier life?” she said. “This is ongoing charity until Judgment Day.”

Prominent Islamic scholars, including those on the board of the General Presidency of Scholarly Research and Ifta, Saudi Arabia’s fatwa (religious edict) authority, issued a ruling in 1982 that organ donation is not forbidden in Islam whether from a living or a dead person.

Islam teaches that the bodies of the dead are to be treated with respect, and many believe that removing organs from a body is forbidden. Others maintain that donating nonessential organs makes the donors compliant in the sins committed later by the organ recipient, a notion rejected by Islamic scholar Mohamed Al-Sihli.

“How does the donor know that this person who is in need of the organ will continue to be a sinner?” he said. “On the contrary, this person might become a better Muslim and a better person if he were treated better (by receiving an organ from another person).”

The Saudi government is trying to promote the act of organ donation. During a recent nephrology conference, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman honored Khalifa and six others for donating their kidneys.

Khalid Al-Rashid, 22, was one of the men honored at the conference for giving his kidney to his father. “I feel really good after the operation because I saved a soul, after God’s will, and it is not anyone; it is my father,” Al-Rashid said.

Hatoof Al-Nomani, 31, was another of the honorees. She donated her kidney to her mother four years ago. “The doctor said she needed dialysis four to five times a day, about every four hours,” Al-Nomani said. The procedure was having a profound effect on the mother’s life and sleep cycles.

“I never hesitated to give my mother my kidney because I believe that we need less than one kidney to live,” said Al-Nomani. “God gave us the other kidney to help the other one in cases of failure or help others.”

Al-Nomani said she had the organ-compatibility tests performed behind her mother’s back out of concern she would immediately reject the notion of receiving an organ from her daughter.

“I live a normal life now,” said the daughter. “I just need to drink more water. I felt that I paid back at least one percent of my mother’s rights. She has always been a giver and that was payback time.”

Like elsewhere in the world, the issue of posthumous organ donation is more complicated form a moral and religious viewpoint. When the donor persists in a state where medical science can keep the body alive but doctors diagnose the patient as legally brain dead.

Under Saudi medical ethics, which is drawn from Islamic principles, vital organs can be removed from people after death provided that the person gave prior consent to do so. However, newspapers have reported instances where the families of the deceased have overridden this prior consent based on their religious views of respect for the dead body.

This is one reason why Khalifa says Saudis should acquire an organ donation card, which helps prove prior consent after a person dies. Doctors also recommend that Saudis who desire to give organs posthumously make this intention clear to family members.

Another issue, one that is clearly forbidden, is the sale of organs. Donors cannot offer to sell their organs, but, according to Al-Sihli, it is permissible for recipients to pay compensation if they desire. “(Donors) cannot fix a certain price for the organs,” said Al-Sihli. “It has to be voluntary unless the person who took the organ offers a financial reward,” Al-Sihli said.

Dr. Faisal Shaheen, general director of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, the national coordinating center for organ donation administered by the Ministry of Health, says Saudis can acquire organ donation cards by visiting http://scot.org.sa.

“The consent of the living donors and the families of the dead is essential before any donation is carried out,” said the doctor. “Many surveys were carried out by the center that disclosed overwhelming acceptance of Saudis to donate their organs while alive and after death. The demand on organs is great.”