China has become the top country in Asia in terms of organ donations, said the first national guideline on organ donation published Saturday in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province.
More than 1,500 voluntary organ donations were recorded in 2015 after China banned harvesting of organs from executed prisoners from January 1, the guideline said.
Public awareness on voluntary organ donation is increasing, Liu Changqiu, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Sunday.
The number of people who volunteered to donate their organs rose from 1,087 in 2010 to 14,636 to 2014, according to statistics from the China Organ Donation Administrative Center under the Red Cross Society of China.
Red Cross has been entrusted to act as a coordinator to accept the organ donors' applications.
The guideline expounds the country's principles and polices in the field, including ethics and standards on extraction and distribution of organs, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Huang Jiefu, head of a national human organ donation and transplant committee and chief author of the guideline, said Saturday he hoped the guideline would help eliminate the public's misunderstanding and bias toward donating their organs after death.
Huang expects 2,500 people will voluntarily donate organs and more than 10,000 organ transplant operations will be carried out this year.
Despite improvements, patients still face challenges in receiving organ transplants.
"Currently, there are about 300,000 patients who need organ transplantation. But only over 10,000 people can receive the transplant every year and the others need to wait," said Huang, adding that there is a shortage of related hospitals and doctors.
Zhu Jiye, director of the Organ Transplantation Center of Peking University, told the Global Times Sunday that Chinese people are generally reluctant to donate organs because maintaining a whole corpse after death is deemed crucial in Chinese tradition.
