China speeds up organ donation promotion

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2013-01-07

After 40-day-old Pengpeng (a pseudonym) died of congenital heart failure early Tuesday morning at the Tianjin No 1 Central Hospital, his parents donated his liver and kidneys, offering hope for recipients' families.

With Pengpeng's liver, a five-month-old with biliary atresia, a congenital disease of the liver, is likely to survive. Without it, the baby would not be able to celebrate his second birthday, said Deng Yonglin, director of the hospital's organ transplantation center.

In a move to standardize and encourage public organ donations, the northern port city of Tianjin passed the country's first local regulation on organ donation on Monday.

The Tianjin Human Organ Donation Regulation, which was passed at the 37th session of the 15th Tianjin Municipal People's Congress Standing Committee, will be effective from March 1, 2013.

The regulation gives a clear legal status to organ donation coordinators, who are either members of the Red Cross Society or medical staff, in disseminating organ donation information, communicating with donors' families, overseeing the organ procurement and transportation process and consoling donors' families, said Gao Shaolin, director of the legislative affairs committee of the Tianjin Municipal People's Congress Standing Committee.

The regulation clearly states the responsibilities of the government, social groups and medical institutions in regards to organ donation, he said.

The municipal health bureau is responsible for supervising the organ donation process. The Red Cross Society of China Tianjin Branch is in charge of organ donation publicity, registration, certification, humanitarian aid, donor commemoration and the selection of organ donation coordinators.

"Many volunteers found nowhere to donate before," said Zhu Zhijun, deputy head of Tianjin No. 1 Central Hospital.

"The introduction of the regulation is conducive to discovering more potential donors, and more lives will be saved," Zhu said.

It will inspire other regions and the country as a whole to introduce legislation on organ donation, Zhu said.

The regulation is a great boost to organ donation, as well as a new starting point for China's organ donation work, said Deng, the director of the hospital's transplantation center.

The State Council, China's cabinet, issued regulations on voluntary organ donation in 2007. But it has struggled to popularize the practice, as traditional Chinese customs call for people to be buried or cremated with their organs intact.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health (MOH) show that about 1.5 million Chinese people need organ transplants, but only around 10,000 transplants are performed annually due to a lack of donors.

The huge gap has led to a thriving illegal market for human organs.

A surgeon and six other people were sentenced to prison in November for their involvement in the case of a teenager who sold his kidney for an iPhone and an iPad in central China's Hunan Province.

Wang, a 17-year-old high school student from Anhui Province, sold one of his kidneys to an agent for 22,000 yuan (around 3,495 U.S. dollars). His kidney was transplanted to someone in Chenzhou on April 28, 2011.

The human organ trade and organ donations from living donors, excluding close family members such as spouses and blood relatives, are illegal in China.

China's determination to end its reliance on organ transplants from condemned prisoners within two years and crack down on illegal human organ trafficking have caused the number of organs suitable for transplant to drop drastically in recent years.

The Tianjin No. 1 Central Hospital, home to Asia's biggest organ transplantation center, only performed 35 organ transplantation operations this year due to the insufficient supply of organs, Deng said.

"Many of the patients die waiting for organs," said Deng.

Medical experts have long urged the establishment of a transparent system for organ donation and distribution in order to boost the number of donors.

The MOH, together with the Red Cross Society of China, started an organ donation trial project in 2010. By mid-December this year, China had recorded 547 organ donations under the trial project in 16 provinces and municipalities.

The trial project will be expanded across the country in February 2013, said Huang Jiefu, Chinese vice minister of health, in the southern city of Guangzhou on Wednesday.

Huang said a national organ allocation and sharing system established in the trial project will be promoted and applied nationwide starting in March 2013.

A national "organ donation foundation" will also be founded next year to offer assistance to families of organ donors, including medical bill reductions and funeral fee exemptions, said Zhao Baige, executive vice-president of the Red Cross Society.

The seed fund is already in place and available. The foundation's management will be based on humanitarian and moral principles, she said in Guangzhou on Wednesday. ' "Although there are still many difficulties, we can feel that people's awareness of organ donation is improving," said Feng Aiguo, deputy director of the Tianjin Municipal Organ Donation Management Center under the municipal Red Cross Society.

Since the trial project began in 2010, 37 people in Tianjin have donated their organs after their deaths, saving more than 70 lives, said Feng.

Deng Yonglin, who has carried out liver transplant operations since 1999, is optimistic about the future of organ donations in China.

"As relevant laws on organ donation improve and people's minds become more open, the gap between demand and supply of organs will be bridged," he said.