Patients and relatives will be unable to impose any conditions on the use of donated organs under new rules due to be introduced by the UK government. The previous health secretary, Frank Dobson, ordered an inquiry in July 1999 after a transplant coordinator agreed to a family's request that the organs of a dead relative be given to a white person.
The inquiry's report says that the dead man's kidneys and liver were “wrongly accepted and wrongly passed through the system.” It criticises senior staff in the UK transplant service and the Department of Health for failing to act to stop the practice when details emerged. The report concluded: “To attach any condition to a donation is unacceptable because it offends against the fundamental principle that organs are donated altruistically, and should go to patients in the greatest need.”
All NHS staff will shortly receive guidance reminding them that organs offered under racist conditions must be refused. Under the new guidelines, relatives will be unable to stipulate that the organs should go, for example, to a child or a non-smoker. The Department of Health is also to review how transplant services can best be modernised. The UK Transplant Support Services Authority, which coordinates transplants, will be renamed UK Transplantation and asked to procure more organs. More than 6000 people were waiting for a transplant in 1999, and only 212 operations were carried out.
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PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORY SERVICE
Salmonella infections in England and Wales have dropped to their lowest recorded level since 1986, according to the latest report by the Communicable Disease Centre. There were 17000 salmonella infections reported in 1999, down 27%from 1998. A spokesman for the Public Health Laboratory Service said that there had been a 50%drop in salmonella infections in the past two years and this was very significant. He continued: “There are a number of factors likely to be behind the reduction. For example, there have been a number of initiatives to increase public awareness and promote better hygiene during food preparation. Also, the industry has been making efforts to control the problem—for example, by vaccinating chickens against salmonella.” He added that over the next few months the Public Health Laboratory Service would be trying to ascertain the exact reasons for the dramatic fall in salmonella infections