Lei Xiangping

    lagon235@163.com

    SINCE early this year, news of voluntary organ donation has frequently been reported: singer Yao Beina donated her corneas to help three patients, a brain-dead man donated his organs to save seven lives and the parents of a 4-year-old cancer-stricken boy donated his organs to save five children. These stories all give the impression that more people are willing to donate their organs after death than in the past.

    Apart from the reports, the latest data also supports this impression. According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, this year’s number of successful cases of organ donation reached 3,502 as of March 1. Even though donation cases for the whole 2014 were only 1,699, organ donation rate per million people increased from 0.02 in 2010 to 1.2 in 2014, an increase of nearly 60 times.

    However, voluntary donation in China still has a long way to go.

    As the second-largest country after the United States in demands for organ donation, China has a large number of patients waiting for organs that can’t be satisfied in the short term. Compared with the U.S. and the EU in organ donation rates, China still lags far behind. Official statistics show that China has 1.5 million patients suffering from organ failure annually — transplants could save 300,000 of them, but only 10,000 receive life-saving organs. Even though donations are increasing, the number of those receiving voluntary organ donations is a very small percentage.

    For decades, China relied on executed prisoners as the main source for donated organs — an unethical practice that compromised China’s human rights credentials — but sales of human organs thrived on the black market because of considerable profits that could be made and because there was no official donation system. However, since Jan. 1 this year, China has phased out the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners.

    Given that China lacks a regulated channel for voluntary donations that can collect and distribute organs fairly and transparently, many Chinese, who are willing to donate organs, are scared off by a perceived lack of transparency in the donation process. Xinhua News Agency recently reported the first nationwide organ donation system planned by the Ministry of Health and the Red Cross Society of China was launched in 2010, but so far, only 35,290 people have registered as voluntary donors and only 547 people as donation coordinators, those who persuade people into donating their organs via the donation system. In Liaoning Province, fewer than 60 people have donated organs in the past five years.

    The lack of qualified doctors eligible for transplant operations also exacerbates the problem. Currently, China only has 169 hospitals qualified for transplant surgeries, and only several hundred doctors can handle the complexity of a transplant surgery, so many patients have to wait so long for the operation they die while waiting. For donors, to keep donated organs alive before a surgery requires expensive drugs, and if they don’t sign a contract with the receivers in advance over who should pay the money, the hospital will hold the donors’ side accountable. This should not happen.

    Traditional belief that the body of the deceased should be kept intact remains the foremost hurdle to increasing organ donations. A public awareness campaign should be launched to encourage people to donate their organs to help others.

    The government should establish a fair, transparent and efficient donation system and develop a support system for organ donors, organ receivers and their families.

    (The author is an editor with the News Desk at China Radio International.)