Faulty transplant system causes unnecessary deaths in Canada

January 19, 2007

The lack of a national transplant organization has made Canada lag behind other developed countries and leaves about 1,100 unnecessary deaths every year, an expert said on Thursday.

Canada is the only developed country that has not a national transplant organization, thus depending on scattered provincial donation programs which rarely have exchanges, said Dr. Phil Halloran, editor of the American Journal of Transplantation and one of Canada's foremost transplant surgeons.

The lack of national standards or federal oversight has made Canada lag far behind the United States on a per capita basis, performing only about 60 percent of the transplants as the latter.

Halloran estimates that almost 1,200 Canadians a year are not getting the life-saving organs they need.

The doctor urged the government to establish a central agency, which would be responsible for five jobs managed on a national level, namely advocacy, benchmarking and standards, collection of data, distribution of organs and engagement of foreign agencies.

In the United States, there are two key national agencies, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and the United Network for Organ Sharing.

These two agencies provide three services: set national standards for organ collection of organs; collect national data; and distribute organs across the U.S. based on need.

Source: Xinhua

Copyright © 2007 People's Daily Online.

This article posted March 18, 2007.