Canada: Overhaul urged for national organ donation system

[Clark]

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Overhaul+urged+national+organ+donation+system/7651670/story.html

Overhaul urged for national organ donation system
BY ERIKA STARK

The chief executive of Canadian Blood Services told a Calgary audience on Tuesday that the current system for organ donation is “failing Canadians.”

Speaking to a group of around 75 members of Calgary’s business community at a Calgary Economic Club event, Dr. Graham Sher stressed the importance of implementing a national organ and tissue donation and transplant (OTDT) strategy.

“We cannot meet demand today and demand is rising. The current OTDT system is failing Canadians.”

Canadian Blood Services released a report in June containing recommendations for improving Canada’s organ and tissue donation rates as well as nationwide access to the services.

The report includes strategies to increase donations and transplants by 50 per cent within five years, as a means to significantly decrease the number of deaths of patients on transplant wait lists.

Dr. Atul Humar, director of the Alberta Transplant Institute, said any step toward implementing the report’s recommendations must start at the provincial level. There are currently just two organ donor registries in Alberta, something Humar said contributes to its abysmal donation rates.

“They don’t work very closely together and they’re not appropriately funded or mandated to try to improve organ donation,” Humar said.

He pointed to other provinces that have central, well-funded organ donor registries.

“What we’ve seen in provinces such as B.C. or Ontario, organ donation rates have steadily improved year to year, whereas ours have actually worsened,” Humar said.

Sher’s speech also touched on his organization’s other current priorities — establishing a national public umbilical cord blood bank and pushing for bulk drug purchasing.

Canada is the only G8 country without a national bank for umbilical cords, the blood of which can be an important source of stem cells for transplant therapy. Sher said Canadian Blood Services is looking to raise $12.5 million over three years to support the bank, which will see its first collection site established at the Ottawa Hospital in April 2013.

“This urgently needed pan-Canadian program will leave a lasting legacy by helping to close the gap in access to health care for those patients waiting for a stem cell transplant,” he said.

Sher also championed Canadian Blood Services’ $500-million drug formulary program as an example of the success of bulk drug purchasing. He said the organization’s support of “bulk tendering and national pricing” is in line with the Premiers’ Health Innovation Working Group.

That group released a report in July that, among other recommendations, supported a national competitive bidding process for generic drugs.

“By leveraging the buying power of all provinces and territories combined, we are able to achieve two critical benefits for Canadians: best pricing and enhanced security of supply,” Sher said.

Sher stressed that pan-Canadian approaches are essential to innovation in the country’s health-care system.

“The governments and Canadian Blood Services have built a system and an approach that can be further developed and applied to other areas of health care, for the betterment of patient outcomes,” he said.