Prevalence of organs and tissues donors among High school and college students

Abstract

Changes in Brazi'lian law 9.434/97, by a provisory standard with a posterior alteration by the law 2.211/2001, relation to the ways of donation, transforming the donation from presumed (1997) to consented (2001), these could have collaborated, trough other elements, to the difficult of a donation culture incorporation among our country. Knowing students opinions is, therefore, a necessary condition to develop educational strategies and help to build a legislation that represents, in fact, the population morality. Purpose: to investigate the prevalence of donors of organs and tissues among high school and college students, and their knowledge about the family consent as prerogative to donation in Brazil. Methods: study of a quantitative approach, based on a comparison of similar variables from two researches about the knowledge of health college students and high school students at the last year, at São Paulo city, made in different periods, 2002/2003 and 2005/2006, respectively. Results: 47% (363) students from high school and 50,6% (316) from college did not know that in Brail the organ donation is consented. There are evidences of a greater percentage of not donors among college students; and the opposite happens with high school students who had a bigger percentage of donors. Conclusion: the prevalence of organ donors among students generally speaking was 66,3% (946), while not donors were 23,1% (329), 8,9% (127) did not know and 1,8% (25) did not informed. Therefore, educational strategies, and not only informative, need to be part of the Brazilian basic school curriculum, to development of a donor culture at the country, to give a subsidy to decide being or not a organ donor. These strategies will depend not only of government regulation, but also of the intentions of the principal involved on this process for its success.