Prisoner harvesting does not take place: former minister
Organ donation in China has seen a prominent rise, said a top medical expert, after a ban on the use of executed prisoners' organs in January 2015.
China has recorded 5,384 voluntary organ donors, who donated 14,721 various organs as of November 9, said Huang Jiefu, head of the National Human Organ Donation and Transplant Committee and former health vice-minister, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.
China is expected to lead the world in terms of organ donation in several years, said Huang at a forum in Changsha, Hunan Province.
Liu Changqiu, a research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that as the transparency of the organ donation and transplant process has grown, more people have become willing to donate their organs after death.
The distribution of donated organs is handled by the China Organ Transplant Response System, a human organ donation acquisition and distribution system launched in August 2013 to prevent organ trading or abuse of power.
In 2014, voluntary donations from Chinese citizens became the largest source of organs for transplant, accounting for 80 percent of all donated organs, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Despite the system's progress, a New York Times report pointed out on November 16 that "organs from prisoners, including those on death row, can still be used for transplants in China, with the full backing of policymakers."
Responding two days later, Huang said that "no legally transplanted organ in China has come from an executed prisoner since January 1, 2015," the Beijing Youth Daily reported on November 23.
"Neither hospitals nor doctors dare to conduct transplant operations with executed prisoners' organs due to much-strengthened regulation," Zhu Jiye, director of the Organ Transplantation Center at Peking University, told the Global Times.
However, Liu said that most hospital ethics committees, which are responsible for reviewing and approving organ transplants, are not capable of identifying paperwork that has been forged by organ sellers, such as documents proving kinship between donors and patients. He suggested introducing cooperation with the police to verify donor identities.
Though donations are increasing, a shortage of qualified transplant doctors has led to a major bottleneck, said Huang, explaining that only 169 hospitals in the country are eligible to perform organ transplants, while only some 100 doctors are able to do the operation.
Huang called for the speedy training of medical talent, and he proposed that the number of hospitals eligible for organ transplant be expanded to 300 and the number of doctors to 400 to meet demand.
In addition, Liu called for specific regulations or laws to safeguard the interests of coordinators, who are responsible for contacting donors and patients.
