Organ quality under fire

Organ quality under fire

• Source: Global Times
• [08:38 March 14 2011]
• Comments

By Yang Jie

A Beijing hospital has appealed to a higher court after being ordered, along with a Hebei hospital, to compensate the family of a patient who died after a kidney transplant in which the hospital could not name the source of the organ.

The trial is ongoing at the Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court, Su Junyou, the plaintiff's lawyer, told the Global Times Sunday.

Beijing Huaxin Hospital (the First Hospital of Tsinghua University) and Cangzhou People's Hospital in Hebei were ordered by the Chaoyang district court to compensate patient Du Juan's family with over 600,000 yuan ($91,251.98) in late 2010.

Du was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2003 and decided to receive an organ transplant in Huaxin Hospital in 2005. The hospital told her in September that year that they found a matching kidney in Cangzhou, Hebei Province, said Su. They paid at least 20,000 yuan for the organ, Su said.

Du was transferred to the Cangzhou People's Hospital on September 26 and received both a kidney and pancreas transplant the next day.

Su said a Huaxin doctor explained that the pancreas transplant was necessary because Du had diabetes.

But Du suffered a high fever and abdominal bleeding after the operation, and fell into a coma. The doctor removed the transplants on October 3, and Du died at about 5 pm that day.

Du's son and husband Zhang Wenming took the two hospitals to court, claiming they could not name the legal source of the organs, which they believed had quality problems. They also suspected the hospitals were involved in organ trafficking.

The Chaoyang court ruled that the hospitals were at fault for doing an additional inappropriate surgery and for substandard facilities and quality of treatment, said Su.

Huaxin Hospital could not be reached for comment Sunday, but the hospital allegedly denied charging Du's family for the organs, and said that there are no standards regulating organ quality, according to a Legal Mirror report Saturday.

Despite a set of regulations detailing requirements for organ transplants, which took effect on July 1, 2006, such operations are still a far cry from being regulated due to a severe shortage of organs.

An organ transplant database is expected to be established to keep better track of organ donors and prospective recipients, Wang Wei, deputy to the National People's Congress and the Party Secretary of the Red Cross Society of China, revealed Friday.