‘Hundreds of donated human organs go to waste in China’

Hundreds of human organs obtained through donations in China are going waste due to poor maintenance and lack of qualified staff, experts said.

Many donated organs ultimately go to waste due to lack of organ maintenance and shortage of hospitals qualified enough to perform transplants, even though China ranks first in Asia in the number of organs donated every year.

“China only transplanted lungs from around 150 of the 2,766 volunteers who donated their lungs last year, and many of those donated lungs have been wasted,” Chen Jingyu, a leading lung transplant surgeon and deputy head of the Wuxi People’s Hospital in East China’s Jiangsu Province, told state-run Global Times.

In China, organ donation usually takes place around one week after the patients are declared brain-dead, whereas in Western countries, most organs are donated within 48 hours, Chen said, adding that delicate organs such as hearts and lungs are unusable after several days due to infection.