BEIJING, Aug. 29 -- Four terminally ill patients in Beijing have reclaimed their lives after receiving a lung, a liver and two kidneys donated by a woman who died of a cerebral hemorrhage earlier this month.

The operations brought the tally of liver and kidney transplants performed at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital since last year to seven and 14 respectively, said Zhang Xiaodong, a senior urologist at the prominent hospital.

"None of the organs used for these transplants were obtained from the court," said Zhang, referring to organ harvesting from executed prisoners, a decades-long controversial practice in China to ease demand for organs.

Zhang, who is also deputy secretary general of China Scientific Registry of Kidney Transplantation, said voluntary organ donation has mushroomed in the country since the government started vigorously promoting the cause four years ago.

Figures provided by Zhang show that in 2009, Chinese hospitals carried out over 6,700 kidney transplants, with more than 50 percent of the organs from death row inmates, only 0.04 percent from voluntary donors and the remaining from living donors who are usually recipients' family members.

However, in the first five months this year, the proportion of donated kidneys used for transplants surged to 30 percent, about the same ratio with kidneys from prisoners, he said.

STANDARDIZED SYSTEM

China piloted voluntary organ donation programs in parts of the country in 2010 and made it a nationwide program in 2013, in order to cut down reliance on prisoner organs and expand ethical sources.

As of mid-August, the programs had seen more than 5,700 organs donated by 2,100 ordinary citizens after death nationwide, said Huang Jiefu, former vice minister of health who leads the country's organ donation and transplant reform, at a forum on development and regulation of organ procurement organization (OPO).

The number of volunteers who completed the donation shot up to 849 in 2013 from 34 in 2010, and reached 659 since this year, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Under the program, OPOs are empowered to extract organs, licensed hospitals can perform transplant surgery and the non-governmental Red Cross Society (RCS) and its local branches are responsible for donation publicity, registry and supervision.

In addition, the government has mandated the use of a computerized system to automatically distribute donated organs based on candidates' location, degree of emergency and compatibility with the organs, for the sake of fairness and transparency.

Before the system was employed in 2011, recipients were largely determined by hospitals. It resulted in rare organs sometimes going to deep-pocketed patients rather than those in the most dire need.

In 2012, China vowed to scrap organ harvesting from executed prisoners within three to five years, even if the country faces an acute shortage of organs. An average of 300,000 patients are waitlisted for transplants a year, but only 10,000 get their wish each year.