China will stop using organs from executed prisoners in transplants on Jan. 1, the firmest deadline given to date for ending the widely criticized practice, an official said this week.
Dr. Huang Jiefu, a surgeon in charge of revamping China’s organ transplant system, said at a conference in the southern city of Kunming on Wednesday that the number of voluntary organ donors had risen quickly over the past year, but was still quite low, The Southern Metropolis Daily reported. As a result, China will face extreme pressure in providing suitable organs for the estimated 1.5 million people awaiting transplants.
Dr. Huang said that so far this year, organs had been collected from 1,500 people who had previously agreed to be donors upon their deaths. In the previous three years combined, there were only 1,448 voluntary donors.
By comparison, last year in the United States, with a much smaller population, 14,256 people donated organs, including 8,268 deceased donors and 5,988 living donors, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Despite the improvements in China, Dr. Huang said, many barriers to progress remain.
“In addition to traditional thinking in China hampering enthusiasm for organ donations,” he said, “people are worried about whether organ donations will be fair, equitable and open.”
The shortage of available organs has led to a black market and concerns about wealthy, connected patients jumping to the front of transplant waiting lists.
In 2009, a state-run newspaper said prisoners were the source of 65 percent of transplanted organs. That reliance on executed prisoners fueled widespread international criticism that it was unethical, because condemned inmates could be coerced into giving their consent and the system could even fuel demand for executions.
The overall number of executions in China has declined steadily in recent years, leading Dr. Huang to declare two years ago that reliance on prisoners for organs was “a dead end.”