PRIVATE TRANSPLANTS TO BE BANNED

Unfortunately we can't claim that this editorial has any influence. It will only be read by a few hundred people and some of our own members don't even bother to read it! Nevertheless it's gratifying to see that, after we highlighted the selling of British-donated organs to foreign patients, ("Controversy Continues ...") in the last PSC-News, the government has now taken the decision to stop the practice. Elizabeth Buggins, ex-Chair of Organ Donation Taskforce, said in her report of the 31st July, "While I found no evidence of wrongdoing in the way organs are allocated to patients, there is a perception that private patients may unfairly influence access to transplants, so they must be banned". Perhaps Ms. Buggins should have looked more carefully.

It shouldn't be forgotten that this information was hidden, for reasons which are not difficult to understand, and it was only because of the efforts of a couple of journalists using the Freedom of Information Act, that this information has been unearthed. The system has been neither transparent nor fair. Only now do we learn that in the last decade there have been over 700 transplants, mostly livers, donated by UK citizens but given to non UK patients. 631 of those transplants used organs from dead donors and 314 of these were from outside the EU. We still don't know how many of these paid privately. They were paying up to £75,000 and bypassing NHS waiting lists. Earlier in the year it was revealed that the livers of 50 British NHS donors were transplanted into foreign patients over a 2-year period, mostly in London at King's College Hospital and the Royal Free.

Linda Hamlyn, Chief Executive of NHS Blood and Transplant, said more than 10,000 patients currently need a transplant, (not only livers, but all organs), but due to lack of organs around 1,000 people die annually before they get one. "In a situation where there are not enough organs to treat the citizens of the very country donating them, the priority must be to ensure a fair and open system..."

Joyce Robins, co-director of Patient Concern, said that her group was instrumental in persuading ministers to commission the report. "We pointed out that this was not only deeply immoral but seriously unhelpful to the whole transplant programme...why should we sign up as organ donors if our organs can then be sold to the highest bidder? The law rightly prevents us from selling our own organs, so it is an outrage that hospitals can boost their income by doing so, while UK residents die for lack of organs."

The practice will be banned from October. But surgeons and others will still be able to add to their earnings from live donor transplantations