For the umpteenth time, Beijing announces the end of organ harvesting from prisoners
Beijing (AsiaNews) - China will completely ban the harvest of organs from executed prisoners by next year, said Dr Huang Jiefu, a former deputy director of the Health Ministry and current director of the China Organ Donation and Transplant Committee.
For the past 20 years, mainland China has felt the sting of international criticism and calls for the practice to be immediately terminated.
Major transplant centres have already stopped using executed prisoners' organs, Southern Metropolis News quoted Dr Huang Jiefu as saying.
However, organ transplants remain a huge untapped market. In fact, official data show that about 10,000 organ transplants are performed on the mainland each year compared to about 300,000 patients on waiting lists.
China has one of the lowest voluntary organ donation rates in the world. Just 0.6 people out of every one million citizens have signed up to donate their organs when they die.
"What we can't deny is that there are two reasons behind the slow development of organ donation in China," Huang said.
"Besides the lack of enthusiasm," he added, "due to the traditional mind-set (shared with other East Asian nations), people have concerns about whether the organs will be allocated in a fair, open and just way." Indeed, this has created pressure to harvest organs from executed prisoners.
Like many other issues, the authorities have been all over the place. After initially denying the practice, they tried to downplay it as an exceptional event only to declare war on the "immoral and unbearable" practice.
In 2006, the authorities adopted a new regulation, which is still in place, to end organ sales.
In March 2012, they admitted that organs were being removed from dead prisoners, but announced that the practice would be eradicated "within five years".
In November of the same year, after more international protests, they set a new deadline for "no later than 2013".
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07/02/2018 09:39
04/02/2009
