Overnight from September 10 to 11 in Astana, a donor procedure resulted in the retrieval of a heart, a lung and a liver, with medical staff forming a 'guard of honor' to pay their respects to the donor, infohub.kz reports.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Health published a video on its official Telegram channel showing medical specialists lined up in a so-called 'guard of honor' to honor the donor from whom three organs were retrieved. The retrieved heart, lung and liver are intended for transplantation to patients on the waiting list.
"Behind every such case lies the enormous work of doctors, intensivists, transplant surgeons, donor coordinators, air ambulance crews and many other specialists. But above all, it is the family's decision at the hardest moment. The Ministry of Health expresses its sincere gratitude to the donor's relatives for their courage and humanity," the ministry said.
Since the beginning of the year, Kazakhstan has identified 132 potential posthumous donors and performed 205 transplantations, the ministry noted.
"The turning point came in 2025. In that year alone, 18 donor procedures have already taken place — three times more than a year earlier — and the number of transplantations has grown almost threefold, to 68. For comparison: in 2023, 19 organs were transplanted; in 2024, 23. The year 2026 confirms that the 2025 result was not a one-off spike. As of September 11, 13 multi-organ donor procedures have been carried out, with 42 transplantations from posthumous donors: 14 kidneys, 9 livers, 11 hearts, 4 lungs and 4 corneas," the Ministry of Health said.