A draft regulation on tightening the control of human organ transplants was approved by the State Council at a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao yesterday.

Under the new regulation, organizations and individuals are strictly prohibited from harvesting organs from Chinese citizens under 18, the Xinhua News Agency said.

The country has re-affirmed its position that human organ trading is banned. The donation of organs should fully respect the will of donors and be conducted voluntarily.

The regulation is designed to protect the rights of organ donors and recipients, and ensure the quality of organs used in transplants, which have to be approved by health authorities.

"The supervision and management over practitioners with admittance into the medical procedure would be further tightened," Mao Qun'an, spokesman for the Ministry of Health (MOH), told China Daily.

Currently, China has no clear laws on human organ transplants. This has resulted in transplants being carried out by unqualified doctors with substandard medical equipment, leading to the death of some patients. It is also widely claimed that hospitals with preoccupied with the quantity of organ transplants they could carry out over quality.

But under the new regulation, a new organization will be in charge of registering and allocating donated organs, while ensuring high surgery standards are met.

Only the top-tier hospitals usually located in provincial capitals will be allowed to perform organ transplants once they have been approved by the MOH. It remains to be seen whether exceptions will be made in emergency cases.

Mao said the MOH would strictly control the number of hospitals licensed to perform organ transplants and supervise the quality of the surgery.

But he added that the regulation also made organ donations easier for the public, with standardized organ donation procedures, while ate the same time encouraging more people to consider becoming donors.

The draft regulation, submitted by the MOH last November, will be implemented after further amendments, according to the Xinhua report.

From last July, the purchase and sale of human organs were prohibited in China.

It is estimated that some two million Chinese need transplants each year, but only 20,000 operations are conducted because of a shortage of organs.

Statistics from the MOH indicate that China performed 34,726 organ transplants from 2000 to 2004, and at the end of 2004, 599 medical institutions performed liver, kidney, heart and lung transplants.

Though organ transplants have been performed in China for 40 years, the absence of laws concerning organ transplants - and irregular organ transplant practices in some medical institutions - have hindered the proper promotion of organ transplants in the country.

Xinhua contributed to the story

(China Daily 03/23/2007 page3)