Morocco plans digital platform to streamline organ donation declarations

Morocco’s Justice Ministry is working with the Health and Social Protection Ministry to develop a digital platform for registering organ donation declarations, aimed at improving coordination and response times in critical cases, Justice Minister Abdellatif Ouahbi said.

In a written response to a parliamentary question, Ouahbi said the platform will allow courts to instantly record donation declarations and update them in real time, including any modifications or withdrawals. The system will be linked to a secure centralized database.

The planned system will enable hospitals and health authorities to access updated information immediately, while also introducing automatic electronic alerts in urgent cases to ensure faster coordination between courts and the healthcare sector, he said.

Ouahbi noted that current challenges stem largely from the absence of a unified national database, which makes it difficult to quickly verify a donor’s status. He also cited the lack of a clear system for immediately reporting withdrawals of consent, as well as delays in transmitting declarations between courts and medical institutions.

The minister said the Justice Ministry has been working alongside the Health Ministry to implement provisions of Law No. 16.98 governing the donation, removal and transplantation of human organs and tissues, while addressing practical obstacles to its application.

As part of these efforts, authorities have scheduled field visits to four primary courts that recorded the highest number of donation declarations. The visits aim to assess operational challenges and identify discrepancies in how records are maintained and managed.

According to Ouahbi, the inspections focus on how donation requests are received and registered, how case files are processed after judicial approval, and how decisions are communicated to specialized medical institutions. They also examine how data is transmitted to the Health Ministry.

He added that previous meetings highlighted difficulties in accessing post-brain-death donation declarations, as outlined in Article 14 of the law, which can negatively affect the speed required to save recipients’ lives.

The discussions concluded there is an urgent need for a digital mechanism to ensure real-time data updates and exchanges between judicial and health authorities, improving efficiency in a highly sensitive and time-critical field.

Ouahbi also announced the creation of a joint technical committee involving departments responsible for criminal affairs, modernization and information systems. The committee has begun compiling national statistics on organ donation registrations, covering the period from January 2013 to December 2023.