Top health body revises organ donation rule
Regulations on procurement, allocation, age specified to tackle trafficking
China’s National Health Commission (NHC) issued a draft for a revision to the Human Organ Transplantation Regulation to solicit public opinions, which includes rules on procurement, fair allocation of organs, legal age for donation and related charges as well as strengthened punishment on trafficking and illegal transplant.
The current regulation was promulgated in 2007 and the revision is a long-awaited legal move to address problems and to fulfill the needs in the practice of organ donation and transplantation, observers said.
The draft, published on the NHC’s website on Wednesday, states “the nation encourages people to donate organs when they pass away” and appointed the Red Cross Society of China to carry out related registration and commemoration work.
The draft gives specific regulations on how donor organs are to be acquired and allocated to recipients, stipulating that live organs can only be donated to relatives of the donor. Juveniles are barred from being a live donor.
Liu Changqiu, a health law expert and research fellow at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said that the restriction on juveniles is in line with the amendment of the Criminal Law in 2011, which wrote organ trafficking into its charters as a crime.
Underage individuals may not fully understand or recognize the risks and costs of organ donation, and the legislation will protect their rights, Liu said, noting this is also common practice internationally.
But Cai Yu, a law professor at the Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, suggested that age restriction should not be a one-size-fits-all policy. Underage donation should be allowed after passing ethics review.
Cai suggested there should be flexibility allowed in the system. For example, donations between relatives should be allowed to bypass the system.
Use of organs in violation of a person’s wishes is prohibited. Unless a deceased person has explicitly stated they do not wish to be a donor, the person’s spouse, adult children and parents can agree to the procedure on his or her behalf, according to the draft.
To tackle the dark zone of organ trafficking, the draft regulation specifies that the NHC must regularly review and certify hospitals that carry out transplant surgeries.
The draft will strengthen punishment for violations and stipulates specific fines and penalties. Taking an organ without an individual’s consent and taking live organs of a person under 18 constitutes a crime.
In 2010, China started a pilot reform of deceased organ donation, and 34 donations were made that year. As of 2019, 27,262 donations had been made and another 2,228 donations were made in 2020.