Mehmet Haberal

After successfully lobbying for changed laws in Turkey, his team performed the first local deceased-donor kidney transplantation at Hacettepe University in 1979.

As a child, he initially aspired to becoming an engineer until his second year at high school, when he changed his mind to medicine.

[2] During his residency, he became interested in general surgery and the management of burns and subsequently co-authored the paper "Results obtained from the application of 0.5 per cent silver nitrate solution in the treatment of burns", published in the Journal of Turkish Medical Society in 1970.

[1] He completed his fellowship in burns at the Shriners Burn Institute and John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas (1973)[3] before training under Thomas Starzl at the Colorado University Medical School Transplantation Center, Denver (January 1974 – June 1975).

[2][5] In June 1975, when he returned from the States, he met with founder and president of Hacettepe University, İhsan Doğramacı, and a transplantation unit was set up.

[8] On 3 November 1975, he led the team that performed the first renal transplantation in Turkey, where a living mother donated a kidney to her 12-year old son.

[7] It legalised the diagnosis of brain death[8] and meant that kidneys could be acquired from a local supply as an alternative to importing from Europe.

[18][19][20] He is the only Turkish citizen to be elected as an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Surgical Association and the Institute of Medicine of the United States National Academy of Science.

Haberal performing surgery