Hopes for kidney transplants to be included in medical insurance

The country's medical departments are striving to bring kidney transplants into the scope of treatment under medical insurance, according to the 2015 China-Australia Transplant Summit & the WHO China National Organ Procurement Organization Training Seminar.

The meeting was held at the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University on Dec 6. Huang Jiefu, director of the China Organ Donation and Transplant Committee and president of the China Organ Transplant Development Foundation, said at the meeting that China will promote training for transplant personnel to meet domestic needs in medical services.

Huang also said, "We are making efforts and hope to increase the number to more than 300 hospitals and 400 surgeons qualified for organ transplants by late 2016 through training."

According to him, the shortage of professionals in transplant surgery has been a bottleneck for its development in China. Currently, only 169 hospitals nationwide are qualified to do transplants with just over 100 surgeons for liver transplants and just over 20 for cardiac or lung transplants.

Ye Qifa, director of the transplant center of Central South University, said that in Hunan province, less than 30 people from nine qualified hospitals can do transplant surgeries, which caused the waste of some donated organs.

Statistics show that in China, 5,384 people had donated 14,721 organs by Nov 9 of this year. However, every year about 1.5 million people die from organ failure, and 300,000 have indications for a transplant. Among them, 28,000 enter the waiting process for a suitable organ donor, but only 11,000 have transplant surgery.

Edited by Peter Nordlinger