China's computerised organ transplant system is step forward

The unrivalled use of the death penalty, and a reliance on organs harvested from executed prisoners to sustain a loosely regulated and corrupt transplant industry, have done nothing for China's international image. This distasteful nexus between legal killing and life-saving transplants has faced a use-by date ever since the Supreme Court introduced new rules in 2007 that reduced the number of executions, making the present transplant system unsustainable.

It is good to see at last that national health officials are moving to cut reliance on it from September 1. They are introducing a computerised system to match organs to patients most in need among the 165 hospitals allowed to carry out transplants, similar to the United Network for Organ Sharing in the US. According to a transplant surgeon at a military hospital, reliance on death-row inmates might end within two years.

Until now, hospitals have had to source organs through their own channels. They have been reluctant to share with each other and have allocated them to patients in an opaque and arbitrary manner, giving rise to corruption and abuses. The surgeon said that under the new system all donated organs - including those harvested from prisoners - would enter a sharing network. Professionally trained co-ordinators will allocate them to those most in need.

China now conducts more than 10,000 transplants each year, but a severe shortage of organs means that four out of five patients die while waiting for a suitable match. Sixty-five per cent of transplants use organs from deceased donors - mostly executed prisoners. A few years ago Guangdong joined 10 other provinces in launching a voluntary organ donation programme. But overcoming cultural inhibitions against organ donation remains a daunting task. The computerised register needs to be backed up with a national education campaign on the benefits of donation. This includes not only saving and enhancing the quality of more lives but improving the nation's image and contributing to reform of the health care system.