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Organ donation in Africa is one of the most sensitive subjects at the intersection of modern medicine, book religions, and animistic traditions. This dilemma places us at the crossroads of death, life, faith, and responsibility to strangers.
Organ donation in African religious texts
Contrary to an accepted idea, neither Islam nor Christianity formally condemns organ donation. The Islamic Council of Fiqh ruled in 1988 that organ donation is permissible, even meritorious (sawab), provided that it is voluntary and without financial compensation. The majority Christian churches consider it an act of charity. Resistance comes mainly from local cultural traditions on respect for the body of the deceased — which is not the same as religious prescription.
Brain Death: A Challenged Border
In many African traditions, death is not a one-off event but a process. Brain death — Western medical concept dated 1968 — is not intuitively accepted in cultures where the presence of breath and body heat still means « life ». This conceptual divergence is at the heart of family resistance.
Solidarity with strangers
The organ donation is one of the most radically altruistic acts: to give part of its being to an unknown, after death, without receiving anything in return. In societies where solidarity is often intra-family, this extension of altruism to strangers represents a moral leap that not all cultures have yet accomplished.
This dilemma has no simple answer. But he asks a deep question: how far does our body belong to us, and how far does it belong to those who might need it to live?
