Materia Medica Malaysiana

Organ donation: ministry will stick to medical ethics

SERDANG June 21 - The Health Ministry will stick to medical ethics requiring a potential organ donor, who is not a relative to the patient, to get its approval, said its minister, Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek.

He said this was not bureaucracy but the accepted medical ethic practised everywhere in the world.

"We sympathise with all patients as they have to wait but this is to protect the donors and the patients," he told reporters after witnessing the handing over of a cheque for RM40,000 from ExxonMobil to Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) to reprint 5,000 copies of each of the five book titles on breast cancer.

Dr Chua said there was a need to verify whether a non-relative potential donor was suitable in terms of blood type and genetics as well as the possibility of the organ being rejected by the patient's body after surgery.

He also refuted claim by Deputy Works Minister Datuk Mohd Zin Mohamad on Sunday that the ministry took weeks to give its approval.

"It's not so and the claim is misleading. It could upset the doctors serving in hospitals as there is no bureaucracy in this context," he said.

In the case of 15-month-old Nur Atiqah Najwa Mohd Shariff, who is suffering from a liver ailment, Dr Chua said the ministry gave its approval to Ahmad Khairiri Al-Hadi Md Yusop on June 18 after receiving his application to become the child's donor on June 10.

He said the process was not simply of issuing an approval letter but of evaluating a non-relative potential donor.

A committee comprising a psychiatrist, a social worker and a medical specialist would have to evaluate a potential donor for his own good as one out of 100 cases, the donor would not make it, he said.

The so-called bureaucracy in the Health Ministry also drew the attention of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who wanted to know why the delay in operating Nur Atiqah, who is in critical condition.

Nur Atiqah was transferred to the Subang Jaya Medical Centre (SJMC) from the intensive care unit of Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (PPUM) at noon on Monday.

She would undergo surgery on June 26.

Earlier in his speech, Dr Chua said there were almost 40,000 cancer patients in the country in 2002.

Of this, he said 4,3378 were breast cancer victims as reported by the National Cancer Registry Report.