Published 19 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2503
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2503

News

UK sees rise in people donating a kidney to recipients they do not know

Susan Mayor

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The number of living donors who volunteer to donate a kidney to someone whom they do not know has increased by 50% in the past year, according to UK figures.

The Human Tissue Authority (HTA), the UK watchdog that licenses the storage and use of human tissue for treatment and research, reports that the number of people who were approved to donate a kidney to someone they do not know rose from 10 in 2007-8 to 15 in 2008-9.

"Although numbers are small, we found the increase in the number of altruistic donors interesting and unexpected," said Vicki Chapman, director of policy and strategy with the Human Tissue Authority. "When the legislation was drafted, we were expecting very small numbers indeed. The rapid increase was surprising but shows there is a future for this type of donation." She noted that most people who volunteer for altruistic kidney donation have personal . . . [Full text of this article]


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