Although the number of carriers of registered donor cards has increased over the past three years, organ donations after brain death have dropped to a record low. Experts said that no benefits have been felt in the three years since the willingness to donate organs was added to the details held on National Health Insurance (NHI) cards.
The Organ Procurement Association (OPA) believes the reason for this lack of success is related to the registration of the willingness to donate on NHI cards as a footnote.
OPA secretary Wu Ying-lai (吳英萊) said while the number of individuals consenting to donate organs and applying for donor cards has increased on average from 200 to 500 a month -- with the number this month expected to be as high as 700 to 800 -- the number of organs harvested at brain death is at a new low.
The are nearly 50,000 people with donor cards. However, because the cards must be carried in order to inform family and medical staff to the holder's wish to donate in the event of death, the effect of the sign-up has been limited.
In Europe and the US, legally binding donor cards are often printed on the reverse of driver licenses. After an evaluation, it was decided to add the wish to donate as a footnote on NHI cards. Wu said that although the number of NHI cards with consent to donate notes has increased to 40,000, the scheme has been largely ineffective.
Medical personnel are largely unaware of the function of the footnote on NHI cards and the information cannot be accessed by many hospital computers, Wu said.
Taiwan Organ Registry Sharing Center (TORSC) deputy executive officer Liu Chia-chi (
The process of adding the consent to donate to NHI cards has also been criticized. The procedure requires people to fill out agreement forms, either in writing or on-line. These are compiled by the OPA, which transfers the information to TORSC, which then reports the data to the Bureau of National Health Insurance for verification and registration. It is a time consuming and labor intensive registration process.
National Taiwan University Hospital surgery professor Ko Wen-che (
Allowing the public to choose whether if they wish to become a donor is known as the "opt-in law" and has been implemented in Taiwan, the US and other countries, he said. In countries where organ donation is more the norm, however, the so-called "opt-out law" dictates that individuals are required by law to donate organs, unless they indicate otherwise, he said.
Countries practicing the "opt-out law," such as Spain, Singapore, France, Italy, Sweden and Greece, among others, have some of the highest organ-donation rates in the world, Ko said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods