China's registered organ donors exceeds 6 million

The number of registered organ donors in China has exceeded 6.18 million, the Red Cross Society of China said on Friday.

The country has conducted 135,000 organ transplants from about 44,000 posthumous organ donors, it said during an event held in Changsha, capital of Hunan province on Friday morning.

China began a voluntary organ donation trial in 2010. Since 2015, voluntary donation has become the only legal source of human organ transplants in the country.

Guo Yanhong, director of the National Health Commission's medical emergency department, said during the event that in 2022 alone, China completed nearly 17,600 organ transplants from about 5,600 donors, up by 5.2 percent and 6.75 percent respectively from the previous year.

"Having achieved this progress in despite of the COVID-19 epidemic was no easy task," she said.

However, she said that the number of organ donors per million populations in China stands at 3.98, lagging behind that in developed countries.

She thus called for further improvement of organ donation mechanisms and stepping up awareness campaigns to boost public understanding of organ donation.