Private Transplants of Organs From Dead Donors to Be Banned in UK

Tagged: Banned, Donors, Transplants, UK

With the growing concern over more and more foreign patients traveling to the UK to pay for organs donated by dead British donors, there is a plan to ban all private organ transplants in the UK. Because of the scarcity of organ donors there was a need to assure the public that donated organs will be fairly allocated within the National Health System. The banning of the private transplants will help ensure that organ donations will go to those who need them the most and not only to those who had money to pay for them.

The Organ Donation TaskForce carried out an investigation on private transplantation after there are a number of newspapers published reports on how the organs from dead donors were being given to private patients from other countries such as Italy and Greece. According to the inquiry that was performed more than 700 organ transplants were performed on non-UK patients over the last ten years. The surgeries were composed mostly of liver transplants. Out of these 700 procedures, 631 of the organs transplanted came from dead donors and 314 of the recipients were patients who were from outside the European Union. It is not clear how many of these procedures were paid privately by the patients. Although there is no evidence of any illegal practices as to the allocation of the organs, it was concluded that to be fair, no one should be able to pay for the operations. The laws on organ transplants will also be tightened regarding which EU citizens will be entitled to transplants under the NHS. Under the EU law, there are patients that can receive medical treatment from other countries in the EU provided the operation has been pre-approved by their healthcare system. It is their country’s healthcare system which will then shoulder the bill of the procedure.