Editorial | Effort needed to lift Hong Kong’s organ donation rates
While respect for cultural sensitivities must be maintained, becoming a donor is ultimately about saving and improving the quality of lives
Hong Kong’s heart-transplant surgeons thought the Covid years would mark the nadir of organ donations in this city. In the event, they received enough donated organs to continue operations that improved or even saved lives.
It is this year that has proved the most frustrating for doctors and nurses with so much specialised skill and experience.
There are more than 70 patients on the heart-transplant waiting list. Up to the end of September only three hearts had been donated, according to the latest Hospital Authority data – well below the eight donations during the pandemic in 2021 and 2023, and the 11 in 2022. It is the lowest since records began 13 years ago.
As a result, while the transplant team, formed by doctors at Grantham Hospital and Queen Mary Hospital, may be the only one for a population of about 7.5 million, it is hardly run off its feet.
Hong Kong is not alone in crying out for organ donors, but it is known for finding it harder than many to get them to come forward. Cultural sensitivities remain among the reasons for the generally low level of organ donations.
Katherine Fan Yue-yan, a consultant of the cardiac medicine department at Grantham, said: “The concept of keeping the body intact after death remains strong for Asians.”
