Hong Kong doctor urges residents to become organ donors as number of kidney transplants performed this year drops to 19
- More than 3,000 people are waiting for transplants, with 80 per cent being kidney patients
- Hong Kong authorities recently appealed to more than 173,000 civil servants to sign up as organ donors
Hong Kong doctors have only performed 19 kidney transplants this year, according to the vice-president of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, who appealed for more people to sign up as organ donors.
Dr Philip Li Kam-tao on Saturday said only 19 kidney transplants had been carried out in the first half of 2023, compared with about 50 annually over the past few years during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The number has hit a new low over the past few years. The number of kidney transplants dropped because of the coronavirus restrictions,” he told a radio programme.
“The situation about organ donation is unsatisfactory. The waiting time for a transplant is long, about five to six years. Some patients passed away while waiting. I, therefore, call on people to extend their care to those in need by signing up as organ donors.”
Hong Kong’s organ donation rate is among the lowest in the world, at 4.99 donors per million people, down from 5.8 in 2015.
More than 3,000 people are on the waiting list for transplants, with 80 per cent being kidney patients.
Authorities recently appealed to the city’s more than 173,000 civil servants to sign up as organ donors after a surge in withdrawals from the register, which city leader John Lee Ka-chiu said was a bid to “sabotage” the system.
Health authorities noticed an “unusual rise” in the number of people applying to be taken off the register from last December to April after the government revealed its intent to establish a donation mechanism with mainland China as a “second-tier” response which would only be used if no suitable patients could be matched with the organs locally.
Officials said of the 5,785 withdrawal applications received during the period, more than 2,900 were found to be invalid because they were filed by people who were not on the register.
However, Li said the number of donors signing up with the Centralised Organ Donation Register had reached 350,000, with more than 5,000 new donors in June and July.
“This has shown that an increasing number of people are unaffected by the ‘sabotage’ incident and are willing to be organ donors. A deceased donor can benefit six or seven families through organ donations and help patients needing transplants to lead a normal life again,” he said.
“The rate of successful organ transplants is really high in Hong Kong, reaching 96 per cent. I encourage people intending to donate their organs to indicate their wishes to their families.”
