Times of India – by Saibal Dasgupta, TNN
BEIJING: China will stop harvesting organs of prisoners on the death row for organ transplants from January 1 next year. The announcement was made by a former official of the Health Ministry at a seminar with the backing of the government.
Future organ transplants will depend entirely on voluntary donations of organs, Huang Jiefu, former vice-minister of Health said at a seminar organized by the government backed China’s Organ Procurement Organization.
Even after the new system is enforced next year, prisoners on death row will continue to be the main source of organ donations, Huang said. What will change is that organs of prisoners will not be arbitrarily traded.
Instead, they will be registered in a computerized system, and given to the needy in a proper manner. Besides, prisoners will be making voluntary donations.
Chinese law permits the government to use bodies of executed prisoners for organ transplant only under certain conditions. They include situations when no one collects the body or the prisoner or his family agrees to donate his organs for medical use. But critics say most agreements are forced on prisoners.
Huang justified the practice of using prisoners given death sentences by courts on the ground that ordinary people are reluctant to make such donations. There are severe shortages of human organs for patients waiting for transplants.
“Every year, around 300,000 patients need organ transplants but only 10,000 surgeries are performed,” said Huang at the seminar.
Only six out of 10 million Chinese sign up for donating organs after death. “The ratio in Spain is 370 for the same number of people. This is almost 62 times higher than of China”, he added.
Citing reasons behind the low participation, Huang said Chinese traditions and the widespread suspicion about fairness of organ distribution are major reasons.
He said there has been a lot of illegal trading of organs both in the black market and even among licensed hospitals. Criminals take advantage of organ scarcity to make profit, he said.
“Before 2007, more than 600 medical organizations could deal with organ transplants,” Huang said, “Driven by financial benefits, many illegal acts happened and nonstandard surgeries were performed.”