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Four in five die in waiting for organ donation

By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-17 09:56

Life is one big relay race for Chen Min. Charged with scouring intensive care units for potential organ donors, she says her mission is to help pass the baton of hope to those in need.

The 43-year-old is a volunteer with the country's first post-death organ donation office, affiliated with the Shenzhen Red Cross Society in Guangdong province, and is on-call 24 hours a day.

"My job is to go from one ICU to another explaining to the dying, or their families, about the options of organ donation and how they could save lives. I also find suitable recipients," she said.

Brave Cai Liu, 27, gives the victory sign before going into surgery for bone marrow transplant at the People's Hospital in Haikou, capital of Hainan province. [Peng Tong/China Daily]

Chen, who has no medical training, helped three people sign up as donors during the first three months of this year.

More than 1 million people need transplants every year in China but only 1 percent undergo the surgery because of the nation's organ shortage, according to official statistics. Experts say four out of every five patients die while waiting for a suitable match.

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Wang Zhanqiang, 49, a middle school teacher from Zhumadian, Henan province, was diagnosed with uraemia, or kidney failure, last year. He was told that a transplant costing around 100,000 yuan ($14,000) was his only chance of survival. Even then, doctors warned him he would still face an anxious wait for a suitable donor.

"They told me it would be cheaper to find a match myself," said the teacher, who earned just 1,200 yuan a month.

After medical tests, Wang's wife proved to be an unsuitable donor but his 23-year-old son was a perfect match.

"But he is young and to lose a kidney at his age could severely damage his health," he explained. "Now all I can do is rely on traditional Chinese medicine. It's better than nothing."

Experts say there are always risks involved with live organ donations, while officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) insist a system of post-mortem donation is the best way forward.

"A nationwide plan might be the only way to save more like Wang," said Chen. "It's no easy task but more people will naturally want to donate when they hear more about the pain experienced by those waiting for organs. At the moment, many people do not even know they can donate their kidney, liver, lung and heart to help others after they die."

China's first transplant was in the 1970s but the country now performs roughly 10,000 each year, second only to the United States, which has more than 20,000 annually, according to official figures.

The Shenzhen team, which Chen joined last year, found China's first voluntary post-death organ donor in 2003, when the deceased patient's liver and kidneys were used to save the lives of two others.

Since then the team has helped 130 people on the Chinese mainland to donate organs, saving 400 lives, said team leader Chen Zhonghua, a professor at Tongji Medical College in Wuhan, Hubei province. He added the deceased donation rate in China is just 0.03 per every 1 million people.

"We were experimenting an open and voluntary system but, given the huge and rapid development of China's transplants, the government should take the lead in establishing and operating a nationwide plan," he said.

The China Red Cross Society launched an organ donation system in partnership with the Ministry of Health on Aug 26. The move is aimed at fostering a healthy, sustainable and ethical source of organs, as well as tackling the problem of illegal trafficking.

"The Chinese share a common value to help others, which was well displayed by the long queues to donate blood to help those injured in the massive earthquake in Sichuan last May," said Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu, an Australia-trained liver transplant surgeon, at the launch ceremony. "The system will encourage more potential donors and is crucial to the healthy development of China's organ transplants."

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