There are now nearly 6.2million registered organ donors in China, according to a story from the China Daily on Monday. The country continues to have the second-highest annual rate of organ transplants worldwide.
According to Hou Fengzhong, director of the China Organ Donation Administrative Centre, the bulk of people who registered as donors were youthful and middle-aged adults, 45 years of age and under.
According to information provided by the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), 1.01million individuals registered as organ donors in 2020; 1.02 million in 2021, and 1.54 million in 2022, respectively.
China began a voluntary organ donation trial program in 2010 and voluntary posthumous donation became the only legal source of organ transplants in the country in 2015, the news report added.
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The programme has conducted 135,000 organ transplants involving about 44,000 posthumous organ donors in 13 years, according to news report.
Guo Yanhong, director of the National Health Commission’s medical emergency department, said during the event that in 2022 alone, China completed nearly 17,600 organ transplants from about 5,600 donors, up by 5.2 percent and 6.75 percent respectively from the previous year.
“Having achieved this progress in despite of the COVID-19 epidemic was no easy task,” she said.
However, she said that the number of organ donors per million populations in China stands at 3.98. They are lagging behind that in developed countries.
She thus called for further improvement of organ donation mechanisms; and stepping up awareness campaigns to boost public understanding of organ donation.
