Doctor urges parents to donate tragic babies’ organs

DOCTORS want more parents to consider donating the organs of tiny babies who have died in their first days of life.

Organ transplants from infants were unheard of in the past. But in the last three years in the UK organs have been taken from 11 babies younger than two months old.

This change has been made possible by advances in transplant techniques and because of new guidelines published last year which made it easier for doctors to be certain when a child was brain dead.

In some cases, parents have been aware that their child would die months in advance yet carried the pregnancy through to term and then allowed the child’s organs to be transplanted.

One defect, anencephaly, in which the brain fails to develop, can be spotted by a scan at 12 weeks. About 230 babies with anencephaly are aborted every year in Britain. Only a dozen are born alive.

The organs of two babies with anencephaly, Teddy Houlston and Hope Lee, who died last year were donated to save the lives of adults. Niaz Ahmad, the transplant surgeon who operated on Teddy, is trying to drive awareness so more parents are given the option to take a similar route.

It is believed that kidneys from up to 100 newborn and young babies who die each year because of birth defects, brain damage or i nfection could be used to save adult patients. Mr Ahmad, of St James’s University Hospital in Leeds, told the British Transplantation Society conference that not enough people know that infant transplants are possible.

‘It is a matter of education, for foetal medicine, those caring for pregnant women and paediatric and neonatal intensive care staff,’ he said. ‘A number of staff in the NHS are not aware these organs can be used.’

The NHS insists no mother would ever be directly encouraged to carry their pregnancy to term just so the child’s organs could be removed. It could only happen if the parents suggested it themselves.

But some medics say that even trying to drive awareness of the option is ‘ghoulish’.

Dr Trevor Stammers, a lecturer in bioethics at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, told the Mail on Sunday: ‘It is a ghoulish suggestion that can only undermine public confidence in transplantation. The concept reduces the baby to nothing more than a utilitarian means to an end.’

NHS Blood and Transplant said it would never put pres- sure on women to continue with a pregnancy solely for the possibility of organ donation.

A spokesman added: ‘Organ donation in the circumstances of pregnancies where a nonsurvivable condition is diagnosed would only be considered if the potential parents have raised it.’

Sally Johnson, NHS director of organ donation and transplantation, said some parents whose baby becomes fatally ill after birth are comforted by being able to donate the organs. She added: ‘We would exert no pressure for them to proceed.’

‘It is a ghoulish

suggestion’