Rwanda: Law On Organ Donation Might Remove Taboo and Save Lives

A new ministerial order makes it possible for people to volunteer to be an organ donor. For that to succeed, some resistance, especially from certain religious groups, will have to be overcome.

When Marie Ingabire Umugwaneza's sister recently donating a kidney to save the life of a friend, the act quite surprisingly provoked a lot of negative feelings in the community - people, it seems, consider is a taboo or even a sin, and organ donors are even discriminated or stigmatized in some places in Rwanda.

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