Dear audience, it’s time for us all to become champions!

You cannot support Serbia any more by sitting in your armchairs. From now on, you will support Serbia by playing to achieve the best possible result.

Serbia has achieved many a victory owing to the heart, proficiency, and skill of its athletes on a number of sports fields. We were and we are proud of that. However, in the game that is played for life, Serbia is losing.

Look at the scoreboard – life is telling us! Serbia has only 3 donors per million inhabitants, while Croatia has as many as 37, Austria – 23, Hungary – 17, Slovenia – 19. We are at the bottom of the European organ donor table. They are winning; we do not seem to understand that this is a game of life of all of us in which we play for lives.

Serbia has won the first half of the game, by responding to the Most Important Call in Life campaign, which yielded good results and increased the number of donors and performed transplantations. This was a campaign that contributed in saving human lives and for people to understand that it is important for Serbia, too, to have a Law in line with the worldwide practices which have yielded best results.

And then, … as if we have not heard the sharp whistle sound which announced the second half, a continuation of the match, the champions’ fight for human lives.

Prejudice started to win; in some cases families did not even respect the will of their beloved ones, who had obtained the donor cards before they died. Serbia has started losing the most important game – the battle for human lives. With the decrease of the number of donors, the number of those who are going to die increases, although they could have been saved. To make a decision to refuse the assumed transplantation even in those rare situations when conditions for that have been met, means taking tough responsibility upon yourself. The law does offer that option.

The Law on Human Organ Transplantation has foreseen the option to refuse the assumed organ donation, if you do not wish to be a donor. The Law respects your will. On the other hand, it also counts on your will. For that will to exist, the awareness on the benefits of organ donorship and transplantation must also exist. Awareness is based on knowledge, while fear is based on ignorance and prejudice – and this is what drives people’s conduct.

In order to win this game of life, it is important to break preconceptions and invest effort in telling people the truth.

The truth is that about 1,000 people wait for organ transplantation in Serbia each year, while many of them never wait to have their lives saved in this manner. In this moment, 39 patients are waiting for heart transplantation, 42 for liver transplantation, and as many as 780 people are in line for kidney transplantation. The gravity of this situation and pain cannot be fathomed by anyone until something like this happens to them.



By adopting the new Law, Serbia wanted to defeat bureaucratic procedures and bring order into this field in line with the global standards and thus contribute to an increase in the number of organ donors. The Law has administered the allocation of jobs between healthcare institutions, defined procedures and activities regarding the organisation, teams and financing the entire transplantation process; a unique information system has been established in the field of organ transplantation – a system of traceability and a strict auditing supervision has been defined.

Lives now depend on our decision, and the decision of the people who are closest to us. Now it is important to play with your whole heart and to play smart.

This is why from 6th of June this year our best athletes Ivana Spanovic, Maja Ognjenovic, Dejan Stankovic, Dejan Savic, Branko Lazic, Dragan Skrbic, Zoran Tosic have been sending us the message – “I am a donor, too! Because I support Serbia!” They, who have already won their champion titles, are winning them now as well, by inviting you to be active and contribute in spreading the truth, in fighting prejudice, in increasing the number of donors and saving human lives.

Champion tactics will lead us to victory:

Show sportsman’s defiance; do not be defiant towards life. Do not let others be better than us. The number of donors is of vital importance. Literally.

Play with your whole heart. Organ donation is a humane act, which is supported by all religions because they consider it an act of posthumous goodwill and an expression of love towards each other.

Play smart! Organ donation is a well-thought, clever move. The chance of one of us needing an organ is 20 times higher than the chance that some organ of ours will be used for transplantation.

Play for a good result! One donor saves more other people’s lives.

Be a donor! And support Serbia.