Newsroom
A 16-year-old girl from Cyprus has received a life-saving kidney transplant through a rare four-person donor chain carried out in Israel.
The operation linked a Jewish volunteer donor, the Cypriot teenager and her family, and two Arab Israeli couples. The series of transplants lasted more than 12 hours and gave four patients new kidneys.
According to Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, the teenager's transplant had to be postponed twice. One of the cancellations came on the day she was due to travel to Israel because of the outbreak of the war with Iran.
The surgery was finally completed at Beilinson Hospital with the support of Israel's National Transplant Center. Doctors began operating at 5am and finished at around 7pm. All four transplant recipients have since left hospital.
The first donor in the chain was 52-year-old Assaf Mor from Hod HaSharon, a father of four. He volunteered to donate one of his kidneys to the Cypriot teenager, even though he had no personal connection to her.
After receiving his kidney, the transplant chain continued because the teenager's mother was unable to donate directly to her daughter. Instead, she was found to be a suitable match for 27-year-old Hana Shaaban from Majd al-Krum, an Arab citizen of Israel. Shaaban had been waiting for another transplant after her previous donated kidney was damaged following Covid-19.
Shaaban's husband then donated a kidney to another Arab Israeli patient named Na'il. Na'il's wife completed the chain by donating her kidney to a woman named Orit.
Speaking after the operation, Mor said he had expected to help one person but later learned that his donation had helped save four lives.
Dr Eviatar Nesher, head of the Transplant Department at Beilinson Hospital, described the cooperation between Cyprus and Israel as one of the strongest examples of medical cooperation between the two countries.
