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Give organ donors' families priority: OPA

"We cannot do anything to reward the organ donors directly for the tremendous favor they have done for us ... But we can give something back to their loved ones."

Wu Ying-lai, Organ Procurement Association secretary-general

Organ donors' families should get priority if one of their members ever need a transplant, an organization promoting organ donation said yesterday.

Organ Procurement Association (OPA) secretary-general Wu Ying-lai (吳英萊) said giving close relatives of organ donors priority would be a way to both thank those who donated their bodies and encourage more people to sign up for the program.

Currently, the waiting list for a transplant in Taiwan is long, with 140 patients waiting for hearts, 760 waiting for livers and more than 6,000 people waiting for kidneys, association figures show.

Although last year saw a record 165 cadaver organ donors, supply still far outstrips demand. There are only 52,000 individuals out of Taiwan's 23 million population who have agreed to donate their organs after death, the OPA said.

"Even if you do not care about people in general, you care about your family," Wu said.

The OPA has sent a proposal to the Department of Health asking that those within three degrees of relatedness to a cadaver organ donor to be given lifelong priority for an organ transplant.

"We cannot do anything to reward the organ donors directly for the tremendous favor they have done for us," Wu said.

"But we can give something back to their loved ones who have made their own sacrifices to make the transplants possible," she said.

The traditional Chinese belief that a person's body must be left whole after death has hampered efforts to boost organ donation rates, Wu said.

The health department said that the proposal could raise ethical questions.

"There have not been precedents for programs like this in other countries," Bureau of Medical Affairs Chief Director Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said. "Such a program might be controversial because it would provide a profit for the donation, even though the profit is indirect."

Hsueh, however, said that the OPA's proposal merited discussion.
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