923 people in Bulgaria were waiting for a transplant on 6 October 2026, and 848 of them need a kidney. Radostina Getova, an expert in the transplant and assisted reproduction department of the Medical Supervision Executive Agency, gave the figures at the 11th conference on pulmonary hypertension in Sofia.

Bulgaria has 13 deceased donors registered for 2026. Doctors have requested 17 kidney transplants, two heart transplants and seven liver transplants. In 2025 and 2026, 50 patients in total got support for a transplant abroad.

A new drug for pulmonary hypertension will be added to the reimbursement list next month, said Assoc. Prof. Dr Vasil Velchev of St Anna University Hospital in Sofia. It is an injection under the skin. He said it will work well alongside the drugs used now.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a rare disease and affects women more often, Velchev said. Patients are 50 on average. The first sign is tiredness, and doctors diagnose it with an X-ray, an ultrasound and an ECG. He said it is still hard to get a lung transplant for patients in Bulgaria.

Dr Sarkis Kalustyan from the same hospital spoke about how doctors treat patients with the thromboembolic form of pulmonary hypertension.

Lung specialist and MP Alexander Simidchiev looked at the law and at practice in other countries. He thinks it is very important for Bulgaria to join Eurotransplant, an international organisation that coordinates the exchange and sharing of donor organs among European countries. He said membership requires 100 transplants a year.

The Pulmonary Hypertension Association organised the conference. Its chairman, Todor Mangarov, opened it and said the association keeps in constant contact with the National Health Insurance Fund and with the companies that import drugs. Topics included new ways to treat the disease and the role of translational research in Bulgaria. Students from the medical universities in Varna and Sofia also took part.

The first transplants in Bulgaria were in 1968, Getova recalled.