The attitude towards organ donation: Differences between students of medicine and nursing. A preliminary study at Unizkm - Catholic University "Our Lady of Good Counsel" of Tirana.

BACKGROUND: A favourable attitude towards organ donation and transplantation is fundamental among health professionals to promote consent, especially in a young healthcare system like Albania. OBJECTIVE: To analyse the differences in the attitude towards organ donation and transplantation and the influencing factors among medical doctors- and nurses-to-be. METHODS AND DESIGN: The article is based on an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study. The population includes medical and nursing students of the Catholic University of Good Counsel - Unizkm of Tirana, Albania. RESULTS: 389 out of 401 students took part in the investigation, of whom 324 enrolled in the Medicine undergraduate program and 65 in the Nursing undergraduate program. Medical doctors-to-be showed higher awareness about the issue of donation than their colleagues from Nursing, and they were more engaged in discussion with other parties. CONCLUSION: The preliminary results of our pilot study highlight the need to organise more training on the topic of organ donation and transplantation among clinical students, especially those studying Nursing.

Time and Mode of Epidemic HCV-2 Subtypes Spreading in Europe: Phylodynamics in Italy and Albania.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 2 causes about 10% of global infections and has the most variable circulation profile in Europe. The history of "endemic" HCV-2 subtypes has been satisfactorily reconstructed, instead there is little information about the recent spread of the "epidemic" subtypes, including HCV-2c. To investigate the origin and dispersion pathways of HCV-2c, 245 newly characterized Italian and Albanian HCV-2 NS5B sequences were aligned with 247 publicly available sequences and included in phylogeographic and phylodynamic analyses using the Bayesian framework. Our findings show that HCV-2c was the most prevalent subtype in Italy and Albania. The phylogeographic analysis suggested an African origin of HCV-2c before it reached Italy about in the 1940s. Phylodynamic analysis revealed an exponential increase in the effective number of infections and Re in Italy between the 1940s and 1960s, and in Albania between the 1990s and the early 2000s. It seems very likely that HCV-2c reached Italy from Africa at the time of the second Italian colonization but did not reach Albania until the period of dramatic migration to Italy in the 1990s. This study contributes to reconstructing the history of the spread of epidemic HCV-2 subtypes to Europe.