4 Guangdong hospitals sign up to donate organs

On March 23, four additional hospitals in Guangdong province, namely the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, the Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, the Guangzhou First People's Hospital, and the Maoming People's Hospital, signed up on Love and Hope, a website run by the China Organ Transplantation Development Foundation that facilitates organ donation.

The website (www.savelife.org.cn) is meant to encourage volunteers to donate their organs, said Huang Jiefu, a former vice-minister of health and now chairman of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, at a press conference in Guangzhou.

Guangdong has led other Chinese provinces in organ donation for the past eight years, Huang said.

Nearly 2,432 organs from more than 835 people were donated in Guangdong last year, while a total of 17,898 organs from 6,302 people were donated throughout the country – an increase of 22 percent over the previous year, said Zhang Zongjiu, chief of medical administration and supervision at the National Health Commission.

The country ranks second globally in terms of number of donated organs, he said.

Eventually, China is expected to have the most organ donors in the world, said He Xiaoshun, vice president of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.

He's team has developed equipment capable of keeping residual animal organs fresh for as long as 10 days. These organs can be used for training surgeons in laparoscopy and endoscopy, as they would improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of such training.