Published online May 6, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i9.1620
Peer-review started: December 25, 2019
First decision: January 7, 2020
Revised: March 12, 2020
Accepted: April 24, 2020
Article in press: April 24, 2020
Published online: May 6, 2020
Processing time: 126 Days and 17.9 Hours
Each year, the number of people on the waiting list continues increase, and the unavailability of adequate organs for transplantation to meet the existing demand has resulted in major organ shortage crises. Religious misconceptions on organ donation is one of the major barriers to organ donation and hence Islamic religious officials as opinion leaders in Islamic communities can play a major role in promoting organ donation culture and clearing misconceptions.
A large number of patients with organ failure die on the waiting lists because of the lack of available organs, many of them become too sick for transplant while waiting and get dropped from the list. We aim to explore readiness of Islamic religious officials as opinion leaders in Turkey to take part in promoting organ donation culture in the country.
The main objective of this study is to evaluate Islamic religious officials’ attitudes and behaviors toward and level of knowledge on organ donation and transplantation. Data from this study would help us to evaluate if this group of opinion leaders have adequate knowledge and attitude which allows them to effectively promote the public knowledge and influence their attitude towards organ donation.
We surveyed 2350 Islamic religious officials working in Turkey. Based on the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-II, Turkey was divided into 26 regions. The number of Islamic religious officials in each city and town in each of the 26 regions was proportionate to the population. A stratified sampling method based on demographic factors was used.
This study showed that only 60.5% of the religious officials deemed organ donation as appropriate to Islamic beliefs. These data show that misperceptions of religion stand of organ donation do exist not only in the public, but it even exists in Islamic opinion leaders. Furthermore, the level of education of religious officials significantly affected the willingness to donate their organs, with far more religious officials with a higher educational level believed that organ donation is a necessary and appropriate human behavior.
Our results showed that Religious officials in Turkey have inadequate information on organ donation, and they need better education before they can be recruited to overcome religious barriers to organ donation and promote organ donation in the country. Furthermore, educational level found to correlate well with positive attitude towards organ donation. This further stress the importance of education and showed that Islamic officials with higher education should be selected for the purpose of public education.
Opinion leaders in the community can have the same misperceptions that present in the public. Their knowledge and attitude needs to be tested before they can take role in public education. Further studies are needed to test the effectiveness of educational courses in changing attitude in opinion leaders, which would help utilizing the efforts of these influential people in promoting organ donation in the country.