Transport delays reduce the time windows for organ transplants

A large proportion of China's donated lungs are wasted due to the country's poor human organ transport system, says one of the country's top lung transplant surgeons.

Chen Jingyu, deputy director of Wuxi People's Hospital, who heads the world's fifth-largest lung transplant center, said that only 60 of the 300 lungs donated in the first half of 2015 in China had been successfully transplanted.

"Many of them were unusable because it took too long to transport them," said Chen. The latest case happened on Sunday when an organ transport team was not allowed to board a China Southern Airlines flight at Guangzhou airport, because the team only arrived at Guangzhou airport 15 minutes before the plane took off as a result of traffic jams.