Hong Kong completes first successful paired kidney donation under pilot scheme

Two patients with failing kidneys have become the first in Hong Kong to receive organs from living donors they do not know since changes to transplant laws took effect three years ago.

The life-extending surgery was made possible when two married couples – each with one person willing to donate an organ to their spouse, only to be deemed incompatible – were found to be successful matches with each other, a first under the paired kidney donation scheme.

The Hospital Authority said it would consider extending the scheme to cover liver donations and explore the possibilities for collaboration with similar initiatives in other countries.

The scheme, launched after the city in 2018 amended the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance, allows a donor-patient pair who may not be a match for each other to donate organs to another donor-patient pair and vice versa, so that patients on both sides get the transplants they need.

Before the change in the law, strangers could not make live donations to transplant patients. Blood relatives or couples married for more than three years were permitted to be donors, while friends needed to obtain approval from the Department of Health’s Human Organ Transplant Board for live donations.

“This scheme aims to change incompatibility into compatibility, so more patients can be helped,” said Dr Janette Kwok Siu-yin, co-chairwoman of the authority’s paired kidney donation working group.

The couples were found to be a suitable match in June this year. The two transplant surgeries were conducted in late August at the same time in Queen Mary Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital respectively. The patients and their families were discharged from the hospital in early September.