Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a report that recommends a voluntary Europe-wide donor card system backed by a transplant hotline. While the vote carries no legal power to enforce such a scheme, it brings the EU one step closer to agreeing that some action is needed to counter the rising problem of organ trafficking.
British Liberal Democrat MEP Liz Lynne said:
“Across the EU 40,000 people are on waiting lists and some 10 people a day die waiting for a transplant.”
One person a day dies in the UK, waiting for the right organ to become available, she added.
The report said that organ trafficking was on the rise because of the chronic shortage of legally available organs for transplant.
It recommends an EU-wide donor card system that would sit alongside the national ones, where they exist, together with a 24 hour transplant hotline across the EU.
Lynne said the EU-wide card with the 24-hour hotline could “speed up the process of finding the right donor,” reported Channel 4 News.
If the donation system were expanded and made faster, this would outstrip the demand for illegally traded organs.
Lynne said that more cooperation and research was needed on organ trafficking and “transplant tourism”.
The report that was presented to MEPs in Strasbourg, said organ donations should be on a strictly non-commercial basis, to minimize the risk of organ trafficking.
Glenis Willmott, British Labour MEP, told the BBC that illegal trade in organs was a problem throughout Europe, and should not be seen “as a distant crime”.
“Several poorer European nations have also become embroiled in the transplant trade,” said Willmott.
Throughout the EU, different countries have different systems of organ donation.
One of the key issues is whether a system should be opt in or opt out. Opt in is where the law requires that donors positively express their wish to donate, whereas opt out is where the law presumes consent unless donors expressly “opt out”.
Spain recently changed to an opt-out system, and many say this is the reason, together with the fact every hospital has a transplant co-ordination team, why their rate of organ donation went up.
There are other ways to improve the donor-recipient ratio. There was a report in the media recently where a US hospital performed a six-way kidney swap transplant. This was a simultaneous six-way kidney transplant operation with six donors and six recipients paired using a “domino” system that relied on one altruistic donation to facilitate better matching of recipients with volunteer donors.
In the UK a similar system was introduced with a change in the law, where families seeking a transplant can now join a register to “swap” kidneys with volunteer strangers. Before, donors and recipients had to be related or well-known to each other.
Sources: Channel 4 News, BBC, MNT archives.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD