Improve system to get more organ donors

The biggest illegal human organ trading case in China, unearthed in Jiangxi province in June, entered the second stage of trial this week. The gang running the human organ racket is said to have made more than 1.5 million yuan ($243,545) by selling 23 kidneys of 40 "potential suppliers" but paid the victims less than 25,000 yuan.

Apart from the miserable treatment meted out to people who are lured into donating their organs for pitiable amounts of money, the case has also highlighted the severe shortage of organ donors in China. Rough estimates show that only 10,000 of the 300,000 patients waiting for kidney transplants every year get donors. Only by putting in place new mechanisms to increase the number of organ donors can authorities overcome this serious problem plaguing the medical sector.

Lack of organ donors in China - as well as in other Asian countries - can be attributed to people's belief that a person's body should be interred (or cremated) intact, because many traditional funeral rituals lay emphasis on the "wholeness" of the body. Another reason for the dearth of organ donors in China is the lack of a clear legal definition of brain death, the criterion used in many countries to determine that a person has died. This is a critical problem that China has to address.