A 16-year-old girl from Cyprus has become the starting point of a remarkable chain of kidney transplants that brought together a Jewish volunteer donor, her own Cypriot family, and two Arab-Israeli couples, ultimately saving four lives.
According to CyBC, the marathon operation, which lasted more than 12 hours, involved four donors and four recipients — spanning Christian, Muslim and Jewish backgrounds — undergoing surgery in succession. All eight patients are reported to be in good health and have since been discharged.
The chain began when a Jewish man, a father of four, donated one of his kidneys to the Cypriot teenager. Although the girl’s own mother was not a match for her daughter, she was found to be compatible with a 27-year-old woman of Arab descent who had spent years on the transplant waiting list.
In turn, the 27-year-old’s husband donated a kidney to another man of Arab descent, whose own wife then completed the cycle by donating a kidney to a further woman suffering from kidney disease.
The teenager’s transplant was carried out through a collaboration between Beilinson Hospital and Israel’s National Transplant Center.
Dr Eviatar Nesser, director of Beilinson’s Transplantation Department, described the Cyprus-Israel cooperation behind the operation as one of the most striking successes of what he called “medical diplomacy.”
