Health system
Willingness to donate organs: This is how Germans fare in an international comparison
In some countries, many people are willing to donate their own organs for the sick after death. Very few would do that in Germany.
The German Organ Transplantation Foundation counts 913 postmortem organ donors for 2020. In contrast, there are almost 10,000 required organs on the waiting list in Germany – including over 7,300 kidneys. A look at the Statista chart shows how low the willingness to donate organs is in this country. While there are eleven postmortem organ donors for every million people in Germany, there are around 38 each in the USA and Spain. Significantly more organs are also donated in France, Italy and Great Britain. This is because in this country only people can donate organs who have expressly decided to donate organs.
Jens Spahn (CDU), Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and a whole series of other MPs wanted to change the Transplantation Act at the beginning of 2020 so that in future every organ donor should be in who has not contradicted this during his lifetime. The Bundestag rejected this bill with 379 votes against. The rejection of the AfD and the Greens was particularly high – the latter having submitted their own proposal for a vote, which found a majority in the Bundestag.
Source: Statista