Donation and Transplantation Institute Paid a Visit to ITB

Upon a Collaboration Agreement between Donation and Transplantation Institute and Iranian Tissue Bank signed in January 2013, both institutes wished to enter this agreement in order to develop ITB in Tissue Banking activities. In this context, Maria Paula Gomez, Colombian medical director and Dr. Eduard Xapelli from DTI have visited ITB to strengthen scientific research ties.

Dr. Mitra Mahdavi Mazdeh, Head of Iranian Tissue Bank introduced ITB as the first and unique multi-facility tissue bank in Iran, established in 1994. She announced that from 1994 to 2006 they have procured more than 2700 tissues from cadaveric donors and today ITB covers 20% of dental materials need of the country. "As ITB is an organ procurement that procures organs for transplantation from Brain Death Transplantation and its mission is to improve lives by provision of safe tissue and cell for transplantation, we welcome all innovative ideas to improve the quality of our products and to do joint research project to change knowledge and new technologies," she said.

Expressing her gratitude for being invited to Iran to finalize the Collaboration Agreement, Dr. Maria Paula Gomez, the DTI transplant coordinator, presented DTI as a non-profit organization constituted under the protection of Spanish legislation whose activity is to train, advice and support public and private health organizations at international level to develop and improve the networks, programs, services and research in organ, tissue and cell donation and transplant. In addition, she noted that DTI has launched a set of TPM which is the international training program offering transplantation courses in some countries such as Lebanon and Brazil, and she wished that such kind of courses could be held in Iran, too.

"We will visit all sections of ITB and the process of evaluation will be performed according to our checklist; after 2 weeks we will send an official report to start the first phase of cooperation," said Dr. Eduard Xapelli, one of the DIT directors.