China launched its first national organ donation system in a bid to crack down on organ trafficking and create a source for transplants other than executed prisoners, who currently make up the majority of donors.
Executed criminals account for 65 percent of organ donors, the China Daily said yesterday, in an unusual admission of the prevalence of the practice.
“[Executed prisoners] are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants,” Chinese Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu (黃潔夫) told the paper.
Foreign medical and human rights groups have long criticized China's organ transplant trade as being opaque, profit-driven and unethical. Critics say death row prisoners may feel compelled to become donors.
Nearly 1.5 million people in China need organ transplants, but every year only 10,000 people can get one, the health ministry said on its Web site.
The shortage means that desperate patients bid up the price, contributing to corruption and unfairness in organ allocation.
China's 2007 organ transplant law bans organ trafficking. But illegal transplants from living donors and tales of foreigners traveling to China for transplants are frequently reported by media and the Ministry of Health.
“Transplants should not be a privilege for the rich,” Huang said.
Chinese law only allows organs to be donated by living people in the case of blood relatives and spouses.
But organ middlemen who specialize in faking documents have helped bring living transplants to 40 percent of donations, from 15 percent in 2006, Chen Zhonghua, organ transplant specialist at Tongji Hospital in Shanghai, told the China Daily.
The new donation system, piloting in 10 provinces and cities, will encourage post-death donations and start a fund to provide financial aid to the needy and to donors' families.
“The system is in the public interest and will benefit patients regardless of social status and wealth in terms of fairness in organ allocation and better procurement,” Huang said.
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