Organs scandal deters donors

GOVERNMENT�ministers and healthcare professionals are preparing for an emergency summit to address the fall in public confidence in the National Health Service, and the possibility of a sudden drop in organ donations, following the release of the horrifying report into the Alder Hey organ scandal.

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Several healthcare professionals, including the noted heart surgeon Sir Magdi Yacoub, of the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, raised the alarm on falling donations.

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He said that he was concerned that there had been no transplant operations at the Brompton in the past ten days, after the publication of the Donaldson Report, which showed that pathologists at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool were retaining organs, including heads and hearts, of dead babies and mass storing them without the consent or knowledge of the parents.

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Sue Sutherland, a renal transplant surgeon and chief executive of the NHS group�that runs the country's transplant programme, supported Dr Yacoub's concerns of a fall in donations. She added, 'We are concerned that the Alder Hey crisis may have a negative effect on people's willingness to donate.'

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The emergency summit, which will be held in the next few weeks, will focus on finding ways to rekindle public confidence in the NHS, which has been severely dented by the revelations of the Donaldson Report.

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At present there are more than 6,000 patients in the country awaiting transplants, however with a fall in the number of people signing-up to be donors, there is a widening gap between demand and availability of organs.

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Statistics also show that a quarter of bereaved relatives refuse to agree to organ donations, and exercised their legal right to withhold consent even if their loved ones had registered as donors.
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This type of public apprehension has plunged NHS transplant units into crisis. Over the last ten years, the number of people awaiting transplants has leapt by 55% as fewer people sign-up and carry donor cards.

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Although 8 million people in the UK are registered donor card carriers, the upcoming summit will address ways to encourage more people to sign-up. The summit is also expected to give the go-ahead to a scheme whereby donor cards will be placed into employee pay packets. People will also be given greater opportunity to sign-up as donors when they apply for credit cards or take part in a national census.

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These initiatives have been launched in response to the healthcare community putting pressure on the government to begin a national campaign to restore the public's floundering trust in the NHS.