For all donors who are more distantly related than 4th generation and for those who have no family ties, the situation and the possibility of donation is assessed by the ethics committee of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Turkey.
The ethics committee must give a document that there are no moral or ethical obstacles between the donor and the recipient to perform the operation.
The ethics committee meets once every 15 days, the chair of the committee is the deputy director of the district health committee. The committee members are:
- District Deputy Director of the Police or the Director of the Police for Organized Crime.
- A physician from a hospital where no transplants are performed.
- A psychiatrist who does not work in a hospital where the transplant will be performed.
- A lawyer who is sent by the bar association.
- A social worker who is sent by the vilayet.
A dossier of recipient and donor documents is prepared by the hospital coordinator and submitted to the ethics committee.
- Donor and recipient passports
- Document that the donor and recipient know right from wrong
- A consent document from the donor to be signed in front of at least two witnesses
- A document for the recipient and donor that they are familiar with the operation, signed by a doctor
- A document from the hospital that there is compatibility between the donor and the recipient, and that the operation can be performed (prepared by the hospital)
- Relationship (even if distant) to be documented
- Document of the recipient's income
- Donor's income document
- Document of address registration
- A declaration signed by the donor before a notary public that he/she donates his/her kidney without pressure from third parties and gratuitously (i.e. without expecting monetary benefit) entirely voluntarily
- If the donor is married, a declaration of consent from the spouse signed before a notary public
- The Ethics Committee reserves the right to ask for further clarification documents if necessary
The ethics committee reviews the documents and interviews the donor and the recipient, and if they authorize the operation this is uploaded from the transplant database system to the Turkish Tissue and Organ Transplantation Organization. The decision of the committee is final if it is not authorized by the committee, the operation absolutely CANNOT be performed. The documents cannot be reviewed by a subsequent committee.
Once the decision of the Ethics Committee is made, the donor and recipient are notified separately and then the surgery can be planned.