In a bid to fight trading in organs and speed up transplants, China’s Ministry of Health and Red Cross Society have announced the launch of an organ donation system that will first operate as a pilot scheme in 10 cities and provinces.

As well as promoting the idea of organ donation, the pilot scheme will register donors and control distribution of organs to recipients, said the two agencies at a meeting in Shanghai on Wednesday.

Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu told the media:

“China should build as soon as possible a donation system in line with the national conditions and international ethics.”

He said China needed to register more donors to ensure transplant quality, eliminate trading in organs and what he referred to as “organ tourism”.

The cities and provinces that will be in the pilot scheme are the cities of Tianjin, Shanghai, Xiamen, Nanjing and Wuhan, and the provinces of Liaoning, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong and Jiangxi.

According to government estimates, although every year there are 1.5 million Chinese patients who need organ transplants, only 10,000 operations take place because of the severe shortage of organ donors.

Up to last year, China had carried out over 86,500 kidney transplants, over 14,500 liver transplants, nearly 900 heart and lung transplants, and more than 220 transplants of other organs. 164 medical institutions on the Chinese mainland have licences to carry out organ transplants.

The Chinese authorities are also investigating reports that some institutions were illegally performing organ transplants for foreigners. “Transplant tourism” was banned in China in 2007, when the government brought in legislation that also outlawed organ trading and trafficking.

Last Sunday in Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, there was a seminar of China’s leading transplant experts organized by the Ministry of Health and a subsidiary of the Novartis company, where it was revealed that there have only been 130 organ transplants from deceased donors in China since the first case in 2003.

This compares with over 10,000 transplant operations that take place every year, where the majority of organs come from executed prisoners.

Chen Zhonghua, the Chinese Medical Association’s deputy director for transplanting told the Global Times that organ trafficking was the biggest obstacle facing China’s organ-transplant practice.

He said that the huge shortage of donors has “created a significant black market for organs, which in turn has ruined public faith and willingness to donate organs.”

Chen said there were already signs of a “backlash”, citing that last year saw a drop in donations from 41 the year before to 36.

He said that executed prisoners, who either gave written consent themselves or it was obtained from their families, will continue to be the main source of organs.

But this won’t be enough, not only because of the increasing demand but also because there has been a dramatic drop in the number of executions.

Xinhua, the government’s official press agency, reported this week that an organ transplant dealer who called himself Li Zhe, said that he keeps lists of contacts for kidney transplants and trading usually starts as soon as there is a match. He takes “care of the procedures” and the receivers bear all the cost, he said.

Li told the Global Times by telephone that:

“A single case costs as much as 200,000 yuan [nearly 30,000 US dollars or 18,500 British pounds] for a patient who needs a kidney transplant.”

Medical checkups for potential donors cost around 10,000 yuan, he added, but did not reveal how much of the money he receives.

Li said that dealers give patients fake identity documents to show that donors and receivers are related, and that dealers bribe not only officials to get the relevant fake papers but also doctors to carry out the operations.

The going rate to pay a doctor to do an illegal transplant operation in Beijing is about 30,000 yuan (about 4,500 US dollars), said Li.

China’s Health Ministry said earlier this month it has launched an overhaul of illegal organ transplants at the 164 medical institutions licensed to carry out such surgery.

When the review is completed, the ministry will then:

“Let the people know and decide which hospital to go to for quality and ethical transplants.”

Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu, said that they will also publicize the waiting list.

Source: Xinhua.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD