Today, October 17, various events are taking place around the world in honor of World Organ Donation and Transplantation Day, reports UNN.

The first modern transplantation, meaning the implantation of organ tissue to replace organ function, was performed in 1883 by Swiss surgeon and later Nobel Prize laureate Theodor Kocher. He carried out a thyroid gland transplant.

In 1954, American surgeon and future Nobel laureate Joseph Murray successfully performed a kidney transplant. The donor for Marine Richard Herrick was his identical twin brother Ronald Herrick.

In 1967, in South Africa, surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant. The patient lived only 18 days after the operation, but this surgery provided a significant boost to the development of transplantation, and today heart transplants and many other organ transplants are commonplace.

According to the Ministry of Health, in 2023, Ukraine conducted 585 organ transplants. The number of bone marrow transplants has also increased. In 2022, 223 stem cell transplants were performed, while in 2023, there were 340.

According to the International Transplant Registry, in 2022, 4.77 people per million population in Ukraine agreed to donate organs after death. For comparison, this figure was 0.25 in 2020. In the United States, this figure reached 44.5 last year, while in Spain, it was 46.03.

Another event today is related to the lives and health of people - World Injury Day.

According to the World Health Organization, various injuries cause the deaths of approximately six million people worldwide each year.

Since 1992, on the initiative of the UN General Assembly, October 16 has been observed as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Statistics show that around 750 million people live below the poverty line. About 10% of the world's population is impoverished and has virtually no access to healthcare, education, or sanitation. For every 100 men aged 25 to 34 living in poverty, there are 122 women in the same age group.