This project has been developed to reach a consensus on European common standards regarding legal, ethical, protection and registration practices in relation to organ living donors, to guarantee their health and safety.

Donation from alive people has been growing strongly in recent years, thanks to the advances in the field of organ transplantation and its success as a treatment to procure quality-adjusted life years for many patients with end-stage diseases. The choice of transplantation from a living donor offers some advantages compared to that from a deceased donor. However, it also carries disadvantages related to donor risks in terms of health and safety, and there are several controversial ethical aspects to be taken into account.

Although donations proceeding from deceased people are very well regulated, there is no specific pronouncement of the European Union in relation to standards of quality and safety for the living donation process. There is a great heterogeneity among European countries legislations, ethical concerns, and protection systems and donor’s data registries on the topic.

EULID is a project co-funded by the European Union in the framework of the EU Health Programme 2003-2008, and its main objective is to analyze the current European situation regarding legal, ethical, protection and registration practices related to living organ donation, in order to set standards and recommendations that guarantee the living donor health and safety.

In order to do so, twelve partners from eleven countries have worked for 30 months to reach a consensus on main statements for the protection of living donors by focusing in the different issues related with the main objective of the project:

• They analyzed and compared the different European countries’ legal and ethical frameworks on living donation in order to establish consensued European legal and ethical recommendations to preserve organ living donors health and safety.
• They analyzed and compared legislated and non-legislated protection practices on organ living donors’ health and safety in European countries, in order to establish European recommendations in relation to living donors’ protection practices.
• It was created an e-registry database model on organ living donors data, in order to have a common European database to monitor living donors.
• Work on the dissemination of the European action framework and common standards on organ living donors health, safety and protection among professional and general public.