FRANCE: Hôpital de Chambéry and ADOT 73 Amplify Call After Double Transplant Recipient Urges Families to Talk As 23,000 Await and Refusal Rates Hit 35 to 40%

Saint-Jean-De-Maurienne Named Organ Donation Ambassador; Twice-Transplanted Advocate Tours Schools

WORLD NEWS – FRANCE: Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne has been designated an ambassador for organ donation, a movement marked by a plaque unveiling at Lycée Paulou during a local health forum where transplant advocacy took center stage. The event spotlighted the human stories behind transplantation and efforts to increase donor registration and family conversations about donation.

A prominent speaker at the forum was Hug, a twice-transplanted patient who now leads the theatre company Hugenko and works with ADOT 73 and the hospital of Chambéry, including its procurement coordination team. His personal journey—serious illness from childhood, a first transplant at 25 and a second at 43—underpins his outreach, which stresses that transplantations save lives and that simple family conversations can lower refusal rates.

To reach wider audiences, Hugenko and collaborators have turned the transplant experience into a stage production created by Magali, blending everyday moments, emotion and respect to make the topic accessible without melodrama. Organ donation organizers acknowledged the difficulty of drawing audiences to a challenging subject but emphasized post-show discussions as crucial for changing attitudes.

Organizers cited national figures: roughly 80 percent of the French population says it supports organ donation, yet refusal at the time of procurement remains around 35–40 percent, often because families were not informed. With about 23,000 people waiting for a transplant, 6,000 operations performed annually and nearly 1,000 people still losing their lives while waiting, advocates urged frank conversations as the simplest, most immediate step to save lives.

Video originally published on 2026-05-18 00:00:25