Transplant list rockets despite new donor rules

A LAW change to increase organ donation has resulted in fewer patients receiving transplants, The Mail on Sunday has learned.

The new rules in England, which came into force in May 2020, mean everyone is presumed to be an organ donor when they die unless they have ‘opted out’.

Officials said the change would lead to at least 100 extra donors and 230 more transplants every year, also ensuring fewer patients would die waiting for an organ.

But NHS Blood and Transplant figures reveal nine per cent fewer transplants took place last year than before the change. The number of donors has fallen by ten per cent since 2019/20 and the waiting list for a new organ has rocketed 28 per cent.

Experts have pointed to a drop in consent rates from families, who still have the final say over whether a loved one’s organs can be used.

But politicians and charities say officials have failed to employ enough specialist transplant nurses, or address problems in over-stretched transplant units, meaning donor organs that become available are turned down if there is no theatre space. Labour peer Lord Hunt, who steered the law through the House of Lords, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I had great hopes we would see a real upturn in the number of donations.’

He added: ‘I don’t think the leadership of NHS Blood and Transplant applied itself sufficiently to driving this forward.

‘We need to urgently reboot the whole thing and to engage the public in a much broader campaign.’

The Government spent £18million on a campaign about the changes – messaging largely lost during Covid. Kidney Care UK’s Fiona Loud said: ‘With Covid came lots of challenges with misinformation.’ She added that the law change ‘needed to be accompanied by appropriate NHS structures, facilities and resources’.

NHS Blood and Transplant’s Derek Manas said it was always predicted that it ‘would take up to five years before we would see the full effect of the legislation in play in England’.