A high-level scientific conclave was hosted by the ochre city. An opportunity for the organisers to look back on the performance, on 19 June, of a liver transplant on a ten-year-old girl from a multi-organ harvest (PMO) on brain death, the second of its kind in Morocco and in Marrakech. Indeed, the first liver transplant had taken place last February, on a ten-year-old boy, and this time, it was from a living donor. This multi-organ donation benefited, in addition to little Hasna, four other people, two corneal transplants in Marrakech and two kidney transplants, one in Rabat and the other in Fès.

It is the first time in medical annals in Morocco that a deceased person has made a multi-organ donation and that a liver transplant has been performed from a cadaveric donor, affirms the director of the Mohammed VI University Hospital, Prof. Mhamed Harif. "This experience constitutes a major step in the process of developing transplantation in Morocco through the realisation, from now on, of complex transplants and the coordination between the University Hospitals of the Kingdom," he said. He also paid tribute to the Franco-Moroccan professor Jacques Belghiti, head of the hepatobiliary-pancreatic surgery department at the Beaujon Parisian hospital and a world authority on liver transplantation, for his significant contribution and his support in the realisation of the organ donation and transplantation programme of the Mohammed VI University Hospital.

The University Hospital is experiencing "historic moments," indicated Prof. Harif, before highlighting the work accomplished by the Organ and Human Tissue Transplantation Committee of the Mohammed VI University Hospital of Marrakech. The Committee has not ceased, since its creation in 2008, to "achieve firsts on a national scale," affirmed its president, Prof. Mohamed Nasser Samkaoui, during the presentation of the organ donation and transplantation programme of the University Hospital. These medical feats concern corneal transplantation in 2009, kidney transplants in 2010, the opening of the first eye bank in Morocco in 2011, organ harvesting from brain-dead patients, and the realisation of bone marrow allograft in 2012, as well as the realisation of two liver transplants in 2014, the last of which was performed from a PMO on brain death, he specified.

Prof. Samkaoui also qualified the Committee's record as positive, both qualitatively and quantitatively, as evidenced by the growing number of bone marrow, corneal, and amniotic membrane transplants.

Regarding the promotion of organ and human tissue donation, he observed that the Committee adequately assumes its mission of informing citizens and professionals involved in the said programme, thanks to the commitment of the hospital coordination team which uses explicit tools with a view to removing misunderstandings and dispelling doubts among the population. For his part, Prof. Jacques Belghiti, also president of the International Liver Transplantation Society, welcomed the excellence of the cooperation between the Beaujon hospital and the Mohammed VI University Hospital of Marrakech and highlighted the competence of the members of the Organ and Human Tissue Transplantation Committee of the University Hospital. "We had long expressed our availability and our willingness to help for both scientific and personal reasons. And it is thanks to the conjunction between these two data that our will has led to the realisation of these transplants," he remarked.

In the same vein, the Deputy Director General of the French Biomedicine Agency, Dr. Karim Laouabdia, highlighted the excellence of the cooperation between the Moroccan Ministry of Health and his institution, which is a public establishment intervening in the fields of organ, tissue, and cell transplantation, procreation, embryology, and human genetics. "We have been working together for 15 years and I think that today we are reaping the fruit of this exemplary cooperation," he added. Encouraging organ donation The Marrakech meeting also offered the opportunity to plead for the promotion of organ donation, to contribute to the training of organ transplant specialists with a view to strengthening skills in the field, as well as to sensitise the population to the vital importance of organ donation and transplantation. The speakers were, on the other hand, unanimous in stressing that the obstacles standing in the way of the development of organ donation and transplantation in Morocco are cultural and financial, in addition to the problem of human resources.

Furthermore, moving testimonies were provided during this meeting by transplant recipients, including little Hasna, and members of their families.

According to the Ministry of Health, some 3,000 corneal transplants, more than 340 kidney transplants, and two liver transplants have been performed to date in Morocco. For the World Health Organisation (WHO), some 120,000 transplants and organ donations are performed worldwide each year, while in France, this number is 4,700.