Mater Dei Hospital Malta is an 850 bedded acute general hospital covering an area of 0.4 million population. This hospital provides acute medical care for the vast majority of medical and surgical conditions including cardiac and vascular surgery, neurosurgery, orthopaedic surgery, medical and surgical paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology. It has a 20 bedded medical/surgical Intensive Therapy Unit run by a team of ITU trained anaesthetists and a separate 5 bedded Cardiac Intensive Care unit. The hospital has had an organ donation and transplantation programme since 1982 when the first live related donation took place. Since then the programme has developed so that today we have approximately 22 deceased donors pmp per year and an ongoing kidney transplant and heart transplant programme. Patients requiring liver transplantation are referred to the United Kingdom. The intensive therapy unit and the transplant coordinators work hand in hand with transplant centres in Sicily and the United Kingdom. Through these collaborations excess organs are exported to Italy and the UK. In the last 10 years Malta has donated more than 50 livers to Italy alone. In 2011 new links were created with ISMETT in Palermo Sicily, creating the possibility for collaboration in the field of lung and liver transplantation between the two countries. Through the active participation in various EU funded projects and Joint Actions, Malta has kept abreast with the recent developments in the field of organ donation and transplantation. In this regard, the main aim of the organisation is to maximise the number of organ donors per year and to provide a high quality care to recipients of organ donation as well as to live donors.
