Israel’s National Transplant Center announced on Sunday that the first month of 2026 has set a record for organ donations and transplants in the country.
In January, 11 families consented to organ donation, leading to the unprecedented number of 54 transplants performed in 47 patients.
The previous record stood at approximately 36 transplants in a single month in 2024.
Seven heart transplants, nine lung transplants (including one lung transplant from a donation from Cyprus), nine liver transplants and 21 kidney transplants were carried out over the course of January, the center said.
Dr. Tamar Ashkenazi, director of the National Transplant Center, said she “deeply appreciates” the transplant coordinators, namely the nurses who work “day and night alongside physicians and intensive care teams to obtain families’ consent at the most difficult moments of loss.”
She praised the imaging teams and operating room staff, and “above all the families, who, with immense strength and despite profound pain, chose to save lives.”
Last month, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that Guinness World Records had decided to reaccept submissions from Israel for a world record in kidney donations.
“I was happy to learn that the flawed decision to reject the submission to the Guinness Book of World Records, simply because it came from Israel, was reversed, and now it is officially a world record,” Herzog said at an event hosted on Jan. 25 by Israeli NGO Matnat Chaim, whose name means “Gift of Life” in Hebrew, which helps people make altruistic kidney donations.
The decision means that the submission from Matnat Chaim marking 2,000 Israeli kidney donors at the event in Jerusalem will be accepted by the British body.
Yerach Tucker, a group spokesman, told JNS at the time that Matnat Chaim had been in contact with Guinness officials, and was told that its milestone event would indeed enter the book of the records in accordance with their regulations.
