The Taipei City Government will offer free funerals for people who have donated their organs as part of a bid to encourage people to sign organ-donor cards, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported yesterday.
The government passed the measure on holding free funeral for organ donors on Tuesday. A health ministry funeral subsidy will go to the deceased who have donated their heart, kidney, liver and pancreas, but the city government intends to extend it to also cover those who have donated corneas, bones and skin, the report said.
If the organ donor is a Taipei resident, the city government will hold a free-of-charge memorial service, issue a citation and publicly praise the deceased organ donor.
Taipei hopes that hospitals can put the city government in touch with family members of the deceased who have donated organs.
It will be left up to family members to decide if the deceased should be publicly praised for their act of kindness.
Like many other countries, Taiwan faces a severe shortage of donated organs because people traditionally believe one should be buried or cremated with the body intact.
According to the Taiwan Organ Registry Matching Center, 6,000 people are on the waiting list for organ transplants, but each year there are only about 100 donated organs, which come mostly from road accident victims and other deceased people.
The lack of donated organs has prompted hundreds of patients, mostly liver and kidney patients, to go to China each year for organ transplants.
The Department of Health discourages organ transplant trips to China because many of the organs transplanted in Chinese hospitals are allegedly harvested from executed prisoners.
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