German Health Minister Jens Spahn holds a new donor card as the government tries to reduce Germany's current backlog of about 10,000 patients awaiting transplant organs (AFP Photo/Tobias SCHWARZ) |
Berlin (AFP) - Germany's health minister Monday pushed an initiative to boost the availability of transplant organs by making everyone a potential donor after death unless they have expressly objected.
The aim of
the presumed-consent rule is to reduce Germany's current backlog of about
10,000 patients awaiting transplant organs -- and the about 2,000 deaths a year
of those who wait in vain.
Under the
new proposal, citizens would be asked to state whether they object to having
their organs or tissue harvested after they are pronounced brain dead.
Those who
say "no" would be listed in a national registry run by the health
ministry, while all others would be considered potential donors -- a principle
in place across most of the European Union.
This would
spell a reversal of Germany's current rules, which ask people to state their
consent to becoming organ donors.
Close
relatives would still be able to block the taking of organs if they
convincingly argue that the deceased would have objected.
Health
Minister Jens Spahn of the centre-right CDU said there are about 10,000
patients waiting for transplant organs and that 2017 had seen a record-low of
fewer than 800 donations.
"Anyone
of us could be in need of an organ tomorrow," Spahn said at a Berlin press
conference, presenting the plan with lawmakers from the conservative CSU, the
Social Democrats (SPD) and the far-left Die Linke party.
Ethics
debate
Spahn said
Germany's potential number of organ donors is far higher as surveys had shown that
over 80 percent of respondents supported the idea in theory.
Under
current rules, people can sign an organ donor card and carry it in their
wallets so that if they die, hospitals know they are allowed to harvest their
organs.
Only about
30 percent of Germans carry such a donor card.
"We
have about 10 times more people on the waiting list for an organ than the
number of organs that are transplanted per year," said the SPD's Karl
Lauterbach.
"Every
year about 2,000 people on the waiting list die."
Some
lawmakers have objected to the initiative.
The CSU's
Stephan Pilsinger labelled Spahn's plan "ethically questionable" and
said it amounted to turning patients into "spare parts warehouses".
Under the
plan, presented jointly with Green party co-leader Annalena Baerbock, citizens
would be regularly questioned whether they want to be donors.
This could
be done when they extend their identity papers or during routine medical
visits.
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