appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Laura Zhou

China’s leading lung transplant surgeon has complained after being prevented from boarding a flight while transporting donor organs for a crucial life-saving operation, mainland media reports.
Doctor Chen Jingyu said more lives would be saved if communication between hospitals and aviation authorities over donor organ transportation was improved, the news portal Thepaper.cn reported.
Chen, deputy president of Wuxi People’s Hospital in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, and his team were prevented from boarding a China Southern Airlines  flight from Guangzhou to Wuxi on Sunday morning, even though he had notified the airline of his plans the day before.
Urgent reforms were needed so lives could be saved through better channels of communication between airlines and hospitals so donor organs were transported without delay, Chen told the Thepaper.cn.
Earlier on Sunday Chen had taken the lungs from a donor in Cenxi in southeastern China’s Guangxi province.
He had then planned to drive from Cenxi to Guangzhou and then take the latest available flight to Wuxi.
However, he and his team were delayed for up to two hours by a traffic jam on main highway leading to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport because of the week-long National Day holiday, which began last Thursday.
Chen said the delay meant they arrived only 15 minutes before take-off and were not allowed to board the aircraft, even though they had coordinated their travel plans with the airline the day before.
Fortunately, Chen and his team were able to board a later Shenzhen Airlines flight to Wuxi, taking off 90 minutes later, and he arrived just before the donor organs would have deteriorated to the point where they could no longer be used in a transplant operation.
In response to Chen’s complaint, China Southern Airlines it would make sure it improved its internal communications in the future.
China has the world’s largest organ transplantation programme in the world, and most of the organ transportation is done by civil airlines; in the West, the transportation of organs is carried out by emergency medical services using commercial airlines.
Although this system is much faster, it is also more expensive, which has put off many mainland patients and families from using it.
Chen said delays in the transportation of organs in the first half of the year meant that, of the 300 lungs donations offered for transplant, many had been wasted and only 60 successful operations had been carried out.


Chinese surgeon says hospitals and airlines 'must talk' after carrier stops him taking flight to urgent operation

Doctor Chen Jingyu, deputy president of Wuxi People’s Hospital in eastern China’s Jiangsu province. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Divers continue search for artefacts from wreck of Chinese Qing dynasty warship sunk in 1894

The three-day exploration of the wreck of the Chinese  warship began on Sunday. Photos: SCMP Pictures

The Chinese warship Zhiyuan Cruise sank near Dandong port in Liaoning province after being holed during battle with an Imperial Japanese Navy warship. Photo: SCMP Pictures

One of the artefacts already recovered by divers is a window (above) bearing the logo of the ship’s name. Photo: SCMP Pictures-

News

China

People & Culture