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Following is a question by the Hon Ho Chung-tai and a written reply by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, in the Legislative Council today (March 21):
Question:
In Hong Kong, quite a number of patients with organ failure need to wait for organ transplant in order to live on. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the number of registrants on the Centralised Organ Donation Register in each of the past two years;
(b) whether it knows the number of patients who passed away in each of the past five years while waiting for the right organ match for transplant; and
(c) whether it knows if there were Hong Kong residents seeking treatment from public hospitals in each of the past five years for clinical problems arising from the organ transplant operations they received in other places; if there were, the details?
Reply:
President,
(a) The Department of Health launched the Centralised Organ Donation Register (CODR) in November 2008 to encourage the public to register their wish to donate their organs after death in the CODR. The numbers of registrations at the CODR in the past two years are shown in Annex 1.
(b) Whether a patient dies because of lack of an organ for transplant depends on the organ needed and the availability of alternative treatment options. Given its complexity and controversy, there is no unanimous conclusion on the issue yet. For some organs including kidney and cornea, patients suffering from nephrosis can live on by receiving dialysis treatment, and lack of cornea for transplant does not directly cause death of patients. After detailed discussions among different organ transplant teams of the Hospital Authority (HA), HA began to adopt a set of standard criteria in 2010 to calculate the number of patients who were on the organ transplant waiting list and died in the year. According to such criteria, statistics on the number of patients who died while waiting for organ transplant are shown in Annex 2.
(c) Regardless of whether the transplant was conducted in Hong Kong, patients who have undergone organ transplant have to receive follow-up treatment after the surgery, such as taking anti-rejection drugs on a continuous basis. HA will provide the necessary follow-up services and continuum of care for these patients.
For kidney transplant, statistics on the number of patients who underwent kidney transplant outside Hong Kong and received follow-up care in public hospitals in each of the past five years are shown in Annex 3.
Apart from those on kidney transplant, HA does not have statistics on the annual number of Hong Kong residents who receive follow-up care in public hospitals after undergoing organ transplant operations in places outside Hong Kong. According to the information currently available to HA, the numbers of patients who are receiving follow-up care in public hospitals and have undergone liver and heart transplant in places outside Hong Kong are 153 and 5 respectively.
Ends/Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Issued at HKT 13:31
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