For more, we are joined in the studio by CCTV's Jin Yingqiao.
Q1, There's a great demand for organ donations in China, paint us a picture of the situation.
A1, Indeed, let's take a look at the numbers. Every year, about 300-thousand patients are in need of organ transplants in China, but the actual transplant surgeries that take place: only 10-thousand each year. That means only one out of 30 gets the organ they need. It's in sharp contrast to the western developed world, where 1 in 3 patients gets that life-saving transplant. The big gap between demand and supply is reflected in people's willingness to donate. There's an organ donation website in China where about 30 thousand donors are registered. That's only one in 40-thousand people... In a survey of over 10-thousand people, 34 percent of respondents say they are willing to donate after death, while 66 percent said no. There's a long way to go to close that gap, but China has already made progress. From 2003 to 2009, only 130 mainland residents voluntarily donated their organs after death. But from 2010 to 2013, in three years, there were over 14 hundred. In 2015, China banned the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners, making voluntary donation the only means. In that year, 2766 donations, outnumbering the sum of 2013 and 2014...and the top in Asia, and the third place in the world.
Q2, You mentioned the ban on the controversial practice to harvest organs from executed prisoners. What other policy changes have there been?
A1, Right, Huang Jiefu, former deputy minister of the Health Ministry, says that in China, 65 percent of organs came from the deceased; among them, 90 percent from executed prisoners. Some questioned if it was done of the prisoners' own volition. So indeed a step forward to ban the practice. And let's back track to 2013. That year, a computer system of organ donation and distribution was launched. It requires all donor organs to go through the system. And now this system covers data all the way from potential donors, to organs, to recipients, to the conditions of recipients after transplant. In March this year, a conference was held in Beijing, determining work objectives including opening a "green passage" to ensure the quick and safe transfer of organs, revision of transplantation rules, and re-examining the credentials of hospitals which conduct transplants...And last Friday, the objective of "green passage" became official policy. This will help raise the utilization rate of donated organs... Speed and safety is so important. According to Dr. Chen Jingyu, China's leading lung transplant surgeon, about 300 lungs were donated across the nation in the first nine months of 2015. But only half of these were transplanted. The rest were discarded because of either poor quality or delays along the way.
