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The first kidney transplantation was performed in Hungary by András Németh in 1962. It was a living donor procedure. After many years of silence, organized cadaveric programs were established in Budapest (1973), Szeged (1979), Debrecen (1991), and Pécs (1993). The heart program was initiated by Professor Zoltán Szabó in 1992 and the liver transplant program by Professor Ferenc Perner in 1993. The pancreas transplantation program was started in Pécs in 1998 by Károly Kalmár-Nagy, followed another in Budapest by Robert Langer in 2004. The lung transplant program was started in cooperation with Vienna in 1996. This fruitful collaboration continues today, even though that the national Hungarian program was established by Ferenc Rényi-Vámos and Professor György Lang in 2015, as it is detailed in this special issue. As a framework, the Hungarian Society of Organ Transplantation was founded in 1997 to give a scientific background for the transplant professionals. The coordination and organ allocation from deceased donors is carried out in collaboration with Eurotransplant. Usually more than 200 potential cadaveric donors are reported yearly, and 168 actual donation after brain death (DBD) donors (17.17 pmp) were utilized in 2018. The multiorgan donor rate was 65.5% among all DBDs in 2018; 505 organs were donated for transplant purposes. To date, more than 10,000 organ transplantations have been performed. The living related kidney transplant program was established in all transplant centers, led by Budapest. In this paper the authors summarize the activity of the Hungarian transplant community and of the Society over the last few decades., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Latin America started its transplant activity early-as soon as the first transplants in the world took place. Its member states have created their laws of donation and transplantation also. The first laws for transplants in the region were created in Brazil in 1963. Subsequently, all states approved its regulatory framework for transplants. Until 2012, Nicaragua was the only country in the region that did not have a transplants law. In October 2013, Nicaragua adopted the "Law on Donation and Transplantation of Organs, Tissues and Cells for Human Beings," which consummates the process that creates the legal framework for donation and transplantation in Latin America, a journey of 50 years' duration, from Brazil's law to Nicaragua's law. This achievement is the fundament for searching an exercise of transplantation in a ground of accessibility, equity, ethics, and transparency as part of comprehensive health care services in the region.