China bans organ trade after bad press from deaths

NST: BEIJING: China said yesterday it would ban the trade in human organs, amid domestic pressure to regulate the chaotic industry and reports that Japanese and Malaysians had died from botched Chinese transplants.
The Health Ministry issued regulations to go into effect on July 1, banning the purchase and sale of organs while also introducing a set of medical standards for transplants.
Hospitals will be banned from taking organs without written consent from the donor, according to the regulations that were published on the ministry’s web site and carried in the state press.
Only China’s top ranked hospitals with a medical ethics committee and a proven ability to carry out transplant operations will be allowed to do so.
The ministry also threatened to revoke hospitals’ licences if patients did not survive for a certain number of years.
"Medical institutions and doctors in this field who violate laws and regulations in conducting transplant operations will be punished according to relevant laws and regulations," the guidelines stated.
However the regulations did not appear to address what is widely recognised as the core problem — a dire shortage of donated organs.
The shortage — state press have said only about one per cent of all patients who need new organs get them — has fuelled what critics inside and outside China say is a rampant black market.
The underground industry meets demand not only domestically but from patients overseas.
To meet the rising demand, hospitals have been regularly accused of secretly taking organs from road accident victims and other dead patients without telling family members.
Sometimes hospitals buy organs from the deceased person’s family, but it is rare for families to consent as they traditionally want to keep the body intact.
Organs of executed prisoners are also harvested and sold to hospitals without consent, according to human rights groups and media reports.
Lawmakers have been pushing for a ban on organ trade since 1986, and the issue was raised at this month’s annual session of parliament.
The problem took on an international focus early this year after reports that Japanese and Malaysians had died after travelling to China for organ transplants.
Japan’s health ministry launched an investigation after the reports that at least seven Japanese died.
A spokeswoman for the World Health Organisation in Beijing, Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, described the trade in organs as "unethical and illegal".
"It has caused a lot of problems in some countries where poor people have to give up their kidneys for money," Bhatiasevi said.
She said there were ways other than trade to address organ shortages.
To encourage families to donate and avoid monetary transactions, countries such as Thailand have the Red Cross as the middleman, she said. It contacts consenting families, harvests the organ and provides it to hospitals free of charge.
"It’s not for profit. It’s a centralised system," Bhatiasevi said.
In some cases the Red Cross helps the families with funeral expenses, she said.
About 20,000 transplants are conducted in China each year, out of at least two million Chinese patients who need them, according to Chinese media.