Medical milestones

Organ transplants have been carried out in hospitals across the globe for decades, but in some countries in the Middle East, the practice was banned until recently.

Opinion has been divided as to whether organ donations from a deceased person are permissible in Islam.

In Islam, the body is viewed as sacred, before and after death, thus prohibiting cremation and tattoos.

One school of thought, particularly in the past, viewed the removal of organs after death as equally impermissible. That view has largely changed in society, and among scholars, to be seen as permissible to save another life.

Performing transplants with the organs of dead donors was legalised in the UAE in 1993, but the law failed to include a medical definition of death.

The ambiguity related to whether a patient was brain dead, or merely cardiac dead, and so it was avoided for 20 years.

Transplants were restricted to organs from living donors, usually kidney operations. Some travelled abroad for treatment, often at significant expense.

In 2013, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health and Awqaf, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments, defined brain death.

This was a milestone and the first donation from a deceased patient was in May 2013, with a kidney being flown in from Saudi Arabia.

Latifa Saeed was the first Emirati to receive a transplant from a deceased donor, at the age of 23 in 2013. She had been on dialysis since she was seven years old.

But the authorities were still not satisfied with the legal framework and waited for an update of the 1993 law. This came last year under a presidential decree.

The law decreed by the President, Sheikh Khalifa, took effect in March this year.