Czech ministry aims to compensate organ donors

[Clark]

http://www.ceskapozice.cz/en/news/politics-policy/czech-ministry-aims-compensate-organ-donors

Czech ministry aims to compensate organ donors
Draft amendment to Organ Transplant Act would reward donors of vital organs without encouraging ‘organ trafficking’
Brian Kenety

The Czech Ministry of Health wants to compensate donors of kidneys, livers and lungs and other vital organs with pay-outs up to Kč 24,000 a piece – the equivalent of the average monthly salary in the Czech Republic.

Currently, although there is a chronic shortage of vital organs, donors receive no financial compensation and may even incur costs for volunteering. Health insurers only cover the medical check-up ahead of surgery, and, for example, prospective donors who are required to take medicine in preparation for the procedure are not entitled to be reimbursed.

That could all change if the government approves the Health Ministry’s draft amendment to the Organ Transplant Act this week, the daily Lidové noviny reported on Wednesday: donors would be paid up to Kč 24,000 to cover the costs of lost wages, hospital stays and other expenses. The law would also allow foreigners to become organ donors.

EU rules stipulate that all organ donations must be voluntary and unpaid, while living donors may receive compensation provided it is strictly limited to making good the expenses and loss of incomes related to the donation. The aim is to prevent the sale of human organs where the main aim is financial gain, rather than a humanitarian gesture.

“This amount of compensation would not incite organ trafficking,” Pavel Březovský, director of the Coordination Center for Transplantation in Prague, told the daily. The center he heads trains “donor consultants” who seek donors of vital organs for use in Czech teaching hospitals, for which it receives EU funds.

Such donors are typically patients who have been officially declared dead after their brains or hearts cease to function, and so the decision is made by their families. The consultants are not doctors and therefore have no influence on the medical treatment of patients in critical condition, nor do they decide who receives an organ.

More than 570 people in the Czech Republic receive life-saving organs in 2010 from about 200 donors; Březovský has said that the work of the consultants could double the numbers, citing results in other EU member states. The proposed change to the  Organ Transplant Act would also compensate families of organ donors up to Kč 5,000 to cover funeral arrangements.

The Czech Republic is among the countries that have an “opt-out system,” meaning citizens are automatically considered donors unless they register as being against it. In a typical year, roughly 900 people in the country are on waiting lists.

In a drive to facilitate the donation, transplantation and exchange of organs in Europe, the European Parliament voted in May 2010 to pass legislation that sets common EU quality and safety standards for transplants, following on a European Commission proposal two years earlier that a directive and action plan be put in place to increase the supply.