Published 2 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3567
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3567

News

China starts to move away from using organs from executed prisoners for transplantations

Jane Parry

1 Hong Kong

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

China’s Ministry of Health and the Red Cross Society of China have jointly launched a pilot organ donation system in five cities and five provinces to harvest organs from brain stem dead patients. The system is a step towards bringing transplant organ procurement procedures into line with internationally accepted practices.

Announcing the programme, China’s deputy health minister, Huang Jiefu, admitted that more than 65% of current organ donors are executed prisoners, with only a tiny proportion of organs coming from brain stem dead people. "Executed prisoners are definitely not a proper source for organ transplants," he told the state run newspaper China Daily.

The new donor system, launched on 25 August, covers five major cities—Nanjing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, and Xiamen—and the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi, Liaoning, Shandong, and Zhejiang provinces. It has been welcomed by observers as a small but important step in the right direction.

"The number of . . . [Full text of this article]


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