Activity report 2024 and opinion barometer 2025

Highlights:

• 6,034 transplants were performed in 2024, a remarkable level not reached since 2017. Activity continues to increase in line with the growth curves defined by the 2022-2026 Ministerial Plan for organ and tissue procurement and transplantation. Our efforts and strategy are bearing fruit, with 401 more transplants than in 2023 (+7.1%).
• Despite the fact that the opposition remains at an unprecedented level of 36.4% (53.5% in Ile-de-France), the growth in activity is mainly due to a sharp rise in the number of heart-stop transplants (DDAC M3, +12.8%), but also to a steady increase in the number of brain-dead donors registered (3169 in 2024, +1.2%) and transplants performed (1544, +2.1%).
• This year, transplant activity grew faster (+7.1%) than the number of active registrants on the national waiting list (+5.5%). If this trend continues, it represents a major hope for all patients waiting for a transplant.

Transplantation is a vital medical activity, used as a last resort in the care of seriously ill patients. It relies on the extensive and complex mobilization of intensive care teams, hospital donation and retrieval coordinators, Agence de la biomédecine regulation and dispatch teams, transplant physicians, and the entire healthcare chain. Although the number of deaths on the waiting list fell by 9.8% in 2024, 852 patients still died this year for lack of access to a transplant.

Key figures for 2024 (vs. 2023) :

• 6,034 organ transplants (+7.1%), i.e. an average of 17 transplants per day;
• 614 living-donor transplants, including 598 kidney transplants (+ 7.4%);
• 3,169 brain-dead donors registered, 1,544 harvested;
• In 36.4% of cases, the donor's next of kin reported opposition.
• With 53.5% of opposition reported by relatives, Ile-de-France is now the region with the highest opposition rate;
• 852 deceased patients on the waiting list, a significant drop of 9.8% compared with 2023;
• 22,585 patients on the national transplant waiting list, including 11,666 on the active list at January 01, 2025;
• 8,378 new patients were registered on the national waiting list in 2024;
• This year, the number of transplants increased faster (+7.1%) than the number of patients on the active national waiting list (+5.5%).

Marine Jeantet, Director General of the Agence de la biomédecine*"In France, we need to reinforce the culture of donation. 8 out of 10 French people are in favor of donating their own organs. In practice, however, opposition from family and friends at the time of death does not go in the same direction.*

*We all need to share our position, whether favorable or unfavorable, with our loved ones. It's simple: all you have to do to take action is say so!

This culture of donation must also be cultivated in hospitals as a priority, so that donation and transplantation can be facilitated at all levels, so that donors can be identified much more systematically, and so that the vast majority of people who actually want to donate can do so.

We also need to give greater support to the medical teams who oversee donation, who make it possible, and who are the linchpins of transplantation. Today, identifying donors, dealing with their families and coordinating donation and transplantation are medical activities that receive too little recognition, even though they saved over 6,000 lives this year. Hospitals have a duty to value these missions, and to support these professionals in their complex and sensitive work.

*That's why I'm personally visiting every hospital that performs organ harvesting and transplantation to meet with management and medical teams. We need to understand their needs and step up our support. All healthcare establishments should be openly in favor of organ donation, and the Agence de la biomédecine is determined to accompany them on this path, by supporting their mobilization and commitment."

AGENCE DE LA BIOMEDECINE PRESS CONTACT GANTZER dons-organes@gantzeragency.com