The Hong Kong government is seeking ways to share transplanted organs between hospitals in the city and those in mainland China, raising concerns about the protection of human rights, according to local media reports and health care advocates.
The government is in talks with Chinese officials to establish a regular system of organ transplant cooperation, despite ongoing human rights concerns related to organ harvesting in China, the pao ming, wen weipo and Singapore Daily the newspapers reported.
The move came as a bill seeking to impose sanctions on anyone involved in illegal organ harvesting around the world passed the US House of Representatives on March 27.
Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau told a recent transplant conference in Hong Kong that the city’s Hospital Authority is currently discussing the creation of a common donor and organ matching computer system, and “hopes to implement it as soon as possible.” possible,” the newspapers reported. .
He did a trip to Beijing earlier this month to talk about a common organ donation mechanism between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the Hospital Authority is currently talking with officials from China’s Organ Transplant Response System, he told journalists the same day that the bill passed in the House.
Lo said he was inspired to pursue the idea by a recent case in which four-month-old Cleo Lai received a successful donor heart transplant from an undisclosed location in mainland China after becoming seriously ill with cardiomyopathy. dilated.
A “clear and transparent mechanism” is needed
Simon Tang, Director of Group Services at the Hospital Authority, praised the “robust mechanism” of China’s National Health Commission in helping to identify the right organ for Lai.
The case prompted Albert Chan, a clinical professor at the University of Hong Kong’s department of surgery, to call for an organ-sharing system to be established with hospitals in mainland China in the future.
“Hong Kong’s organ donation rate is very low,” Chan said. “If the (…) government can establish a clear and transparent mechanism for more organs donated from the mainland to help people in Hong Kong, that would be very encouraging news,” Chan told government broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong at the time.
Alex Lam, president of the Hong Kong Patient Voices advocacy group, said organ donation rates are even lower in China than in Hong Kong.
“The proportion of donors in China is lower than that in Hong Kong, and the demand for organs is high,” Lam said. “My question is, even if there is an organ available in China, what is the probability that they will not find a suitable recipient in mainland China, given that there are so many people on the waiting list there?”
Data from the International Organ Donation and Transplant Registration Organization shows that the rate of cadaveric organ donation has slowed over the past decade in Hong Kong, but has remained consistently higher than the rate in mainland China. at 4.66 last year compared to mainland China. 3.63.
Lam said there are concerns that organs could be harvested from Hong Kong donors in the future, who are given little choice about where they end up and who may not want their organs to go to mainland China.
“Has the government listened to donors on this issue?” Lam said. “They need to respect your wishes if they are changing the plan.”
Voluntary donors or executed prisoners?
Song-Lih Huang, secretary general of the Taiwan International Medical Alliance, said there are also issues surrounding proper transport facilities for organs and legal differences between the two jurisdictions.
He cited concerns about the origin of the organs donated by China and whether they were taken from executed prisoners or from voluntary donors.
“Where do the organs come from?” Huang said. “From someone who was in an accident, or from prisoners on death row, including prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, or from live organ harvesting?”
“None of us know the answer to that, and it’s very hard to verify,” he said. “We don’t know how many executions are carried out in China each year, nor any way of knowing who is on death row.”
Huang said there are also differences in how brain death is declared in Hong Kong and mainland China.
The United States Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023if passed, it will impose sanctions on individuals and entities involved in forced organ trafficking, and authorizes the Department of State to revoke the passports of individuals convicted of certain organ trafficking-related crimes.
China’s former head of organ transplantation, Huang Jiefu, and colleagues report in the UK-based medical journal. the lancet in 2011 that about 65% of transplants in China use organs from deceased donors, more than 90% of whom were executed in prison.
And a 2022 study in the American Journal of Transplantation found evidence in 71 cases of “organ removal executions” of prisoners, concluding that “the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the immediate cause of the donor’s death.”
China is believed to be one of the the best executioners in the worldbut the exact number of executions is considered a state secret by the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.
