A high-ranking Chinese health official on Sunday called for
increasing human organ donations to meet the country's great
clinical demand.
Huang Jiefu, vice minister of health, told a seminar that the
scarce supply of human organs has been a major obstacle for human
organ transplants in China, citing that there is a huge gap between
the patients who need functional organs and limited donations.
Statistics show that about 1.5 million patients need organ
transplants each year, but only 10,000 can find organs, he said.
"Human organ donations are far from the clinical demand."
In China, most organs are donated by ordinary citizens upon
their death after the voluntary signing of donation agreements.
Medical experts believe that if organs were allowed to be removed
from people declared "brain-dead", the organ supply would be
increased significantly.
However, Chinese people's traditional view of "living till the
last breath" has prevented them donating their organs, which has
been blamed chiefly for the insufficiency of organ supply.
In addition, the lack of brain-dead criteria and malpractice of
some medical institutions not only wasted precious resource of
human organs but also endangered recipients' safety.
"China will seek to change people's traditional view and
encourage a humanitarian spirit of helping each other. It will also
seek to establish an information network on registration and
distribution of human organ donations to increase the supply of
organs," Huang said.
He disclosed that the Ministry of Health has worked out relevant
criteria on brain-dead, while he did not provide further
details.
"Nevertheless, China will likely carry out different criteria on
brain-dead and breath and heartbeat stop in a parallel manner in a
very long period of time to come, leaving people on their own to
choose appropriate death criterion," he said.
The State Council, China's cabinet, on Wednesday adopted
regulations to tighten the control on human organ transplants,
banning live organ donation by people under 18 years old and also
human organ trading.
The regulations say that the donation of organs should respect
the will of donors and be conducted voluntarily.
The regulations have been made in accordance with worldwide
recognized medical ethics and the basic rules of the World Health
Organization on human organ transplants, said a statement issued by
the State Council on Thursday.
The regulations have been adopted to follow international
practices and laws, the statement said.
Although China has been actively working on regulating human
organ transplants, Huang said, the country still lags behind others
on the legislation and management of organ transplants.
"We still have a long way to go," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2007)