Government and Policy

Ministry to tighten oversight of transplants

By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-19 08:40

Beijing - The country's top health authority began a campaign on Monday to better regulate organ transplants, procedures which in China have been long ridden with irregularities if not crimes.

The campaign will last until the end of the year and is aimed mainly at mainland medical institutions that fail to obtain the government's authorization before performing the technically demanding surgeries, said an online notice issued by the Ministry of Health on Monday.

The ministry also said unauthorized hospitals are prohibited from harvesting human organs for use in transplants.

China now contains 163 hospitals authorized by the ministry to perform organ transplants. Yet, despite the country's attempts at controlling the performance of such surgeries, certain medical institutions continue to pursue the fat profits that can be made by flouting laws and regulations.

The ministry plans to deal strictly with violators.

"Upon detection, severe administrative punishments, including heavy fines and revocations of operating licenses, will be meted out," it said.

Shi Bingyi, a veteran organ transplant expert at the No 309 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Beijing, welcomed the ministry's hard stance, saying it will benefit both authorized hospitals and patients.

Even so, he conceded: "Patients often choose incompetent hospitals if they are desperate to obtain a match for an organ transplant."

At the hospital where Shi works, patients usually must wait from two to three years to secure donated kidneys that are suitable for their bodies.

About 10,000 organ transplants are performed each year on the mainland. Estimates meanwhile hold that another 1.3 million people, largely because of a short supply of donated organs, have to wait for a transplant.

As a result, opportunists have taken to illegally trading human organs in the black market in order to make large profits, experts warned.

In January, a young man surnamed Hu had his kidney removed at an unauthorized hospital in North China's Shanxi province and in return got 27,000 yuan ($4,100), according to the China Youth Daily.

The report said his kidney could command a price of 150,000 yuan on the black market.

"We are all poor people," said a mother surnamed Yang in Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province. Her 22-year-old son has been hoping for a kidney transplant for half a year.

"Of course I'd like to choose authorized hospitals," she told China Daily. "But I'm not sure if my son can survive for long without an organ match."

Many know of a remedy to these ethical and legal difficulties.

"Increasing the supply of legitimate organ donations is the best way to solve such problems," said Chen Zhonghua, a leading organ transplant expert based in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province.

Chen is a consultant to the Red Cross Society of China, which is working closely with the ministry to establish China's first system for donating organs voluntarily.

About one year into the system's trial run in 11 regions on the mainland, more than 40 people have been willing to part with their organs after their deaths.

China Daily

(China Daily 04/19/2011 page13)