Lives on the line: Hongkongers die waiting for an organ donor with a big heart
While all agree there are too many sick people in need of too few transplant organs, proposed solutions pose practical and ethical dilemmas
The recent death of 19-year-old Jamella Lo after a heart-rending and fruitless two-week wait for a double lung transplant has again highlighted the urgent need for Hong Kong to champion organ donations.
Around 3,000 patients are on waiting lists for transplants of organs and other body tissues. Many die before a donor is found.
Only around 174,000 people - just 2.4 per cent of the local population - are registered as potential donors on the government's Centralised Organ Donation Register.
Hong Kong's donation rate is 5.4 patients per million population, compared with 20.4 in the United Kingdom and 27.02 in the United States last year, according to the International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation.
Everyone agrees the city should find ways to boost its organ donation rate as soon as possible. The health minister came up with one suggestion - make all Hongkongers potential donors unless they opt out.
Such a presumed-consent scheme, adopted by many countries such as Singapore, Sweden, Spain and Austria, would have to be implemented through legislation. Under such a law, all deceased Hongkongers would automatically donate their usable organs, unless they had expressed a wish not to be a donor.
