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Regulations on organ donation are proposed to be changed |
The National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation yesterday held an international seminar on the mobilization and coordination of donated organs from brain and heart-dead people.
According to the law, any person 18 years old or older who has the civil capacity and voluntary behavior has the right to donate tissues and organs while alive or after death.
Many conference participants voiced their opinions that organ transplantation in Vietnam is facing many challenges due to the lack of sources of organs for transplantation, while patients need a huge organ transplant. Currently, Vietnam’s regulations on organ donation are big barriers, while a few people registered for tissue and organ donation, failing to meet the nation’s demand for organ transplants.
Therefore, some suggested that Vietnam needs to learn from foreign experience by putting people’s agreements to donate tissues and organs on the back of their driver's licenses. At the same time, it is necessary to amend the law that parents or guardians of deceased people should be allowed to decide on tissue and organ donation for people in need as well as allow prisoners to donate tissues and organs. If it is so, many brain-dead people can donate tissues and organs after death.
In response to the above proposals, Deputy Minister of Health Tran Van Thuan said that in order to fix the shortcomings and limitations of the current legal regulations, the Ministry of Health is amending the Law on Donation, tissue collection and transplantation of human organs. The new law will pay attention to the age of donors, rights for donors, a financial mechanism in organ and tissue donation and transplantation, regimes and policies for medical workers who coordinate and encourage people to give tissue and organ without money to save others’ lives.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, approximately 265 people registered to donate organs in 2014, while by the end of June 2023, some 73,213 people registered to donate organs and there were 7,498 successful organ transplants. However, only 146 tissue and organ transplants were performed from taking and transplanting tissues and organs from brain-dead donors, so the number of organ transplants from living donors still accounts for more than 90 percent.
