Kidney exchange in Germany

Videos (in German)

Nierenspende: Wenn du Leben retten willst, aber nicht darfst

Eine anonyme Organspende ist in Deutschland nicht möglich, in anderen Ländern schon

Activism

The German Federal Parliament legalized kidney exchange and non-directed donation on March 26, 2026. With this, the main goal of my journey in the German kidney donation scene has been reached. Back when I started voluneetring in the field, kidney exchange was forbidden, unlike in most other countries.

A powerful campaign was launched by the activist Susanne Reitmaier, whose daughter waited in vain for a transplant in Germany, but was later operated as part of the Spanish kidney exchange program. I joined Susanne in 2019. We maintain a pool of incompatible patient-donor pairs willing to undertake an exchange. We have built a database out of the voluntarily submitted medical data of incompatible recipient-donor pairs and using the platform KEPsoft, regularly check it for possible crossover donations among these pairs. The first quadruple was transplanted in 2021, which was followed by more transplantations in the subsequent years. We keep on identifying matching pairs until a national program is set up in Germany.

I reached out for public awareness as an invited speaker at the 5th Digital Future Science Match in May 2019 in Berlin.  I reported on the progress to the members of the  European Network for Collaboration on Kidney Exchange Programmes (ENCKEP) at their meeting in December 2019 in Glasgow. I consulted the Federal Ministry of Health while they prepared the law change and wrote research papers on the expected effects.