More people willing to donate since launch of system in 2010: expert

Guangdong Province has seen the highest number of organ donations in China over the past 12 months compared with other provinces and regions, the Guangdong Branch of the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) said Sunday.

Li Jingdong, the director of the office of organ donations of the RCSC Guangdong Branch , said they recorded 387 donors between April 2014 and April 2015, close to a 50 percent increase from the same period last year.

In 2013, 165 organ donations were recorded, while in 2014 the number rose to 246.

"People are more willing to donate human organs since China introduced an organ donation system in 2010, with the Red Cross Society serving as an independent third party for supervising and facilitating donations," Liu Changqiu, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times Monday.

In August 2013, the National Health and Family Planning Commissionissued a new rule to prevent human intervention and ensure fairness and transparency in human organ distribution, stating that donated organs must be distributed automatically through a national system.

Liu added that in the past, organs were distributed by hospitals.

Gao Xinpu, an official of the China Organ Donation Administrative Center, previously told the Guangzhou Daily that all donated organs have been distributed through the organ donation system.

Under the system, patients who need an organ transplant will register in the system and queue up based on a first come, first serve basis. Zhao Ming, director of the organ transplant center at the Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, said that the system is very strict and the organ distribution will not be affected by money or personal relations.

"Although organ donations remain scarce in China, the donation system has steadily gained the people's trust," Liu added. The number of organ donations of Guangdong Province makes up about 20 percent of the total number of organ donations in China.

"Organ donations mainly come after car accidents and traumatic brain injuries," Li explained. Among the donors, Li said 60 percent suffered from traumatic brain injury while 35 percent suffered from stroke.

China has the world's second-largest demand for organ transplants. There are approximately 300,000 patients on the waiting list for an organ transplant annually, while only about 10,000 organ transplant surgeries are done, Xinhua reported in 2014. The supply to demand ratio of public organ donations in China is 1.2 to 100,000 people, while the ratio is one to three in developed countries such as the US.