A single organ donation organisation for the whole of the United Kingdom should be set up to ease the shortage of donor organs, a government task force has concluded in a report published this week.
More than 8000 people in the UK are currently awaiting organ transplants—primarily kidneys—and the numbers are rising by about 8% every year, according to figures from UK Transplant. Over 1000 people die every year waiting for a transplant.
The report, drawn up by representatives from specialist societies, MPs, and royal colleges, among others, nominates NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) as the most suitable candidate to take on the task.
The move would see a doubling in the numbers (to around 200) of donor transplant coordinators, whose role is to encourage consent to organ donation and support bereaved families through the process.
These coordinators would become part of a centrally coordinated network and would be employed by NHS Blood and Transport rather than local trusts.
This network, recommends the report, should be supported by boosted numbers of dedicated organ retrieval teams, available 24 hours a day and working closely with hospital critical care teams, to increase the supply of high quality organs for transplant.
Under the proposals, trusts would be officially monitored on their donation activity and rewarded financially accordingly.
The 14 proposals are intended to increase the number of donors by 50%, providing an additional 12 000 transplants every year in the next five years.
And the reports suggests that these proposals would ultimately save the NHS over £500m (€662m; $983) in costs for kidney dialysis alone over the next decade.
The 20 member Organ Donation Task Force, which was appointed in December 2006 to look at improving organ donation and transplant rates, is due to publish its second report on presumed consent for organ donation this summer.
Last summer, England’s chief medical officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, recommended in his annual report that patients should be automatically placed on the NHS organ donor register unless they or their families specifically opt out.
Currently, 15 million people are registered, but there are shortages in some sectors of the population, particularly the black and minority ethnic groups.
In an article “Organ donations help us make a difference” published in the Sunday Telegraph on 13 January (www.telegraph.co.uk/) Prime Minister Gordon Brown signalled his support for presumed consent, which would require a change in the law, and called for a national debate on organ donation.
“A system of this kind has the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery and the limits imposed by our current system of consent,” he wrote.
The report calls for the establishment of an independent UK-wide Donations Ethics Group to resolve the outstanding ethical and legal issues, and ensure that all clinicians are able to “work within a clear and unambiguous framework of good practice.”
Mr Jim Wardrope, president of the College of Emergency Medicine supported the proposals: “I think you still need to be sensitive to families’ wishes at what is a very difficult time. But [presumed consent] would help shift opinion and make organ donation the norm.
“If these recommendations make the process simpler, easier, and quicker, and help the public’s understanding and help staff, then that has to be a good thing.”
Organs for Transplants. A report from the Organ Donation Taskforce is available from www.dh.gov.uk.