Organ transplantation in China: in transition--and controversy about paying funeral costs

 I recently spoke at the CAST transplant conference in Hong Kong (see picture), and the underlying theme of my talk, and of many talks there, was the transition of transplantation in China, and what its future might hold.

Jie-Fu HUANG is the other speaker on Zoom (to my right and your left), and Haibo Wang is on the far left on stage.

Here are two of my opening slides (using 2021 data from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation)

On the left, you see that, today, China and India already perform more kidney transplants than any country in the world except the U.S.  On the right, you see that, by virtue of their large populations, they accomplish this despite their quite low rates of transplants per million population, compared to the U.S. and countries in Europe.  So if China and India can raise their transplant rates to rates comparable to the U.S. and Europe, most of the transplants in the world will be done in Asia, and many many additional lives will be saved.

Note that China mostly transplants kidneys from deceased donors, while India mostly transplants kidneys from living donors. So they have different paths (and plenty of untapped potential) for raising donation and transplantation rates.  And their paths to their current positions have also been very different.

Here is a recent account reflecting China's recent progress:

Chen, Zhitao, Han, Ming, Dong, Yuqi, Zeng, Ping, Liao, Yuan, Wang, Tielong, et al. (2023). First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China: 5-year Experience at a High-volume Donor and Recipient Liver Transplant Center. Transplantation, 107, 1855-1859. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000004561

" In 1972, our center performed the first living donor kidney transplantation in China. Since then, kidney and liver transplant programs have evolved. By the beginning of the 21st century, organ transplantation had advanced, and clinical liver transplants have been performed successfully at the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.1

"Organ shortage has been a prominent feature at our institution as it has been around the world. Starting in the early 1980s, many organs had been procured from inmates on death rows. This unethical approach has been rightfully criticized by the worldwide community. As a consequence, the source of organs for transplants has solely been replaced by voluntary donations from Chinese citizens since January 1, 2015.

...

"Moreover, policies and methods for humanitarian aid to donor families were established. Those policies follow WHO guidelines while recognizing specific aspects of the Chinese culture. The State Ministry of Health and the Red Cross Society of China launched a pilot project on organ donation after the death of citizens in 2010 and established the China Organ Donation Committee. The principle of this pilot project was to learn from the experiences and standards in developed countries while recognizing national conditions and the social reality in China aiming to build an ethical and effective scientific organ donation and transplantation system.2

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In the same issue of Transplantation as the above article is this invited commentary by Ascher and Delmonico, both former Presidents of The Transplanation Society (of which Transplantation is the official journal). They largely approve of the effort China has made in transplants, but they have a big reservation.

Ascher, Nancy, MD, PhD & Delmonico, Francis. (2023). Organ Donation and Transplantation in China. Transplantation, 107, 1880-1882. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000004562

"The date of 2015 is important for the review of any organ transplantation report from China because of the public proclamation in the media in 2015 prohibiting the use of organs from executed prisoners. Clinical transplantation articles antecedent to 2015 have been consistently rejected by Transplantation and the international community because the source of the transplanted organs was most often an incarcerated prisoner. China took a major step to condemn this practice publicly in 2015. However, because there is no law or regulation that prohibits this unethical practice, there has been ongoing concern that this practice may be continuing. Notwithstanding such a reality, there have been regulations that are citable and may be reflective of the changing experience of organ donation and transplantation in China that are consistent with the World Health Organization (WHO) Guiding Principles.

...

"WHAT CONTINUES TO BE OBJECTIONABLE

"The Chinese Red Cross is prominent in the organ donation process and a center of support for deceased donor families designated by the Red Cross as humanitarian aid to donor families.7 However, such humanitarian aid, although not limited to China, should not be misinterpreted to be an effort because it includes payment to elicit consent for donation. The Sun Yat-sen publication suggests that the Red Cross policies follow WHO guidelines while recognizing specific aspects of Chinese culture without elaboration as to the cultural details. A payment to donor families for funeral expenses or other monetary incentives should be recognized as a form of commercialization and would not comply with WHO guidelines."

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Some background may help put this objection in perspective. Doctors Delmonico and Ascher are prominent signatories of a declaration that payments to families of organ donors are crimes against humanity (as are payments to living donors, and both are declared comparable to transplanting organs from executed prisoners, and to be organ trafficking. See my 2017 post.)

So, they raise the question of whether saving many lives by increasing deceased donation in China will be justified if it involves paying funeral expenses of donors.  

My guess is that Chinese health authorities, thinking of the many lives to be saved, will think that this act of generosity to families of deceased donors will indeed be justified, taking account of (see above) "national conditions and the social reality in China aiming to build an ethical and effective scientific organ donation and transplantation system." 

Many people in China and elsewhere might even think that little if any justification is needed for generosity, particularly generosity to families of deceased donors, that is to families who are themselves generous.

Same sex unions take a limited step forward in Hong Kong

 The Washington Post has the story:

Hong Kong court hands rare victory to advocates of same-sex unions, By Lily Kuo and Vic Chiang September 5, 2023 

"In a partial victory for Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community, the city’s top court on Tuesday ordered the government to give same-sex couples some form of legal recognition.

"The surprise ruling, which stopped short of meeting demands for full marriage equality, stated that the Hong Kong government had violated gay citizens’ constitutional rights by not granting them an “alternative framework” such as civil unions or civil partnerships.

"The majority verdict decided by five judges on the Court of Final Appeal gave Hong Kong two years to create a new framework that would confer “legal recognition” on same-sex relationships “in order to provide them with a sense of legitimacy, dispelling any sense that they belong to an inferior class of persons whose relationship is undeserving of recognition.”

...

“We are not addressing the question of whether in terms of social policy for Hong Kong same sex unions should be recognized with rights and obligations similar to those presently enjoyed by heterosexual couples. That is a question for the government and the legislature; and social policy is not a question for the court to decide,” wrote Justice Johnson Lam."

THE 18TH CONGRESS OF ASIAN SOCIETY OF TRANSPLANTATION (CAST) 25 -28 August 2023 • Hong Kong

Tonight, Sunday, at 5:30pm California time, I'll be opening the Monday morning session in Hong Kong of the THE 18TH CONGRESS OF ASIAN SOCIETY OF TRANSPLANTATION 25 -28 August 2023.

Keynote Lecture

28 Aug 0815-0915 Theatre 1 Keynote Lecture III

Chairs : Albert CY CHAN, Hong Kong, China

Hai-Bo WANG, Mainland China

Topic 1. Transplant economics Alvin ROTH USA

Topic 2. Organ transplantation reform in China: The synergy of Chinese cultural traditions and WHO guiding principle  Jie-Fu HUANG Mainland China

Organ transplants between Hong Kong and mainland China: the promise and the politics

 This is a followup post to an earlier post# about the first cross border transplant in China between the mainland and Hong Kong. That's been followed by some political tensions, as reported in this forthcoming article in the American Journal of Transplantation.

A plan to save lives: Hong Kong–mainland China second-tier mutual assistance allocation. The new program between the transplant communities plays out on a backdrop of controversy and historical tension  by Lara C. Pullen, PhD, Published:July 28, 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajt.2023.07.015

"Key points:

"The transplant communities of Hong Kong and mainland China have proposed a second-tier mutual assistance allocation program that some find controversial.

• Tensions between Hong Kong and mainland China have a long and deep history.

• In 2014, the Chinese government announced a stop to obtaining organs from executed prisoners.

• Transplantation in mainland China has rapidly evolved, and people monitoring the change report that data from 10 to 15 years ago does not reflect the country’s current system."

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The background:

In December, the South China Morning Post carried this story about a transplant involving an organ recovered on the mainland and transplanted into a baby in Hong Kong, which was apparently the first such  transplant to cross that border:

4-month-old Hong Kong girl suffering from heart failure receives successful transplant with donated organ from mainland China, in city’s first such arrangement by Cannix Yau

One of the subheadlines is "Health Bureau notes importation of organ met relevant regulations, and hospital officials say arrangement involving mainland might be repeated in future"

***

And here's the story in the China Daily:

Securing a new lease of life By Li Bingcun | HK EDITION | Updated: 2023-03-31 15:10

"Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland have successfully carried out the first-ever cross-boundary organ-sharing operation, saving the life of an infant. The feat caps the city’s strenuous efforts to create a standing mechanism in organ sharing with the mainland to save more lives. Li Bingcun reports from Hong Kong."

***

Apparently the discussion of closer cooperation between transplant authorities in Hong Kong and the mainland is politically fraught. 

Here's a story from the Global Times that refers to some pushback from the mainland:

First organ donation between mainland and HK saves 4-month old baby By Wan Hengyi

"the acceptable heart donation for Cleo requires a donor weighing between 4.5 kilograms and 13 kilograms, and the chances of a suitable donor appearing in Hong Kong are slim to none. 

...

"COTRS initiated the allocation of a donated heart of a child with brain death due to brain trauma in the mainland on December 15. As a very low-weight donor, no suitable recipients were found after multiple rounds of automatic matching with 1,153 patients on a national waiting list for heart transplants in the COTRS system. In the end, the medical assistance human organ-sharing plan between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong was launched.

"Some netizens from the Chinese mainland asked why a baby from Hong Kong who has not lined up in the COTRS system can get a donated heart when there is a huge shortage of donated organs in the mainland.

"In response, the organ coordinator told the Global Times that the requirements for organ donation are extremely high, noting that all the prerequisites including the conditions of the donor and recipient, the time for the organ to be transported on the road and the preparation for surgery must reach the standards before the donation can be completed.

"The COTRS system has already gone through several rounds of matching, which is done automatically by computer without human intervention, said the organ coordinator. "

...

"As of the end of October 2022, a total of 42,500 donors had donated more than 126,300 large organs in China, according to Guo Yanhong, director of the medical emergency department of the NHC."

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Here's a story from the Guardian, about political concerns on the Hong Kong side:

Hongkongers opt out of organ registry ‘amid fear of Chinese donations’      by Amy Hawkins

"Thousands of Hongkongers have opted out of the city’s organ donor registry, seemingly as a form of subtle protest against proposals to establish deeper medical ties with mainland China.

...

"The trigger appears to have been a life-saving operation carried out in December on a four-month-old baby girl in Hong Kong, who was in need of a heart transplant. When a local match could not be found, a heart was transferred from a child who had suffered brainstem death in mainland China.

...

"Since the baby’s heart transplant, authorities have discussed the idea of establishing a mutual assistance registry with mainland China to facilitate future donations. That would be yet another erosion of the boundary between China and Hong Kong, which was supposed to remain largely autonomous from Beijing until 2047.

"Earlier this month, local news outlet Ming Pao reported that there had been discussion on social media among Hongkongers who did not want their organs donated to patients in mainland China."

********

China has a population approaching 1.5 Billion people, and Hong Kong is a city of about 7.5 Million people, so my guess is that HK is too small to have an efficient self-contained transplant system, and could benefit from being integrated into the mainland's system.

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#Here's my earlier (contemporaneous) post:

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Cross-border transplantation between China and Hong Kong

Kidney Exchange in Hong Kong

While liver exchanges have been done for some time in Hong Kong, possibly the first kidney exchange  has recently been reported by China Daily:

Exchanging the hope of life By Li Bingcun | HK EDITION |  2023-06-16 

"It was the first time that paired kidney transplants had been carried out in the city. Following a pilot program launched in 2018, if a patient's family member is willing to donate a kidney to the patient but their conditions do not match, the family is allowed to make a cross-donation with another family in the same situation. Previously, organ donations from living donors could be made only by close blood relatives and spouses.

"In addition to kidney transfers, Hong Kong has accomplished several cross-family liver transplants since 2009 with special approvals made by the Human Organ Transplant Board on a case-by-case basis. Facing a severe shortage of organ donations, Hong Kong is drawing on overseas experiences to widen the scope of donations from living donors by trying to overcome restrictions concerning blood type and marriage, seeking greater matching possibilities to achieve more life-saving miracles.

"These attempts involve considerable efforts to update traditional mindsets, address the accompanying ethical and legal issues, and protect the safety and interests of donors and recipients to the fullest extent.

However, because of risks to donors, medical experts suggest that organ donations from living people should never be the first choice, and that the priority should be boosting people's willingness to register as organ donors, allowing organs to be reused after registered people die.

"Globally, such kidney exchange programs have been introduced in South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, with surgeries performed two decades ago.

"Besides paired donations, the US also allows "nondirected donations", which means a donor can donate his or her kidney to any compatible patient. The largest kidney swaps were completed in 2014, involving 70 participants. Some global exchange programs have also carried out transnational kidney donations.

"With Hong Kong's relatively low organ-donation rate, more than 2,000 local residents are awaiting kidney transplants each year, with an average waiting time of about five years, and the longest 29 years. The number of kidney donations from living family members is less than 20 annually, while the number of cadaveric donations declined from 84 in 2012 to 45 in 2022.

"Although renal-failure patients can receive dialysis to sustain their lives, organ transplantation is still the best option. Moreover, the quality of organs of living donors is considered better than that of cadaveric organs.

"To offer patients another option, Hong Kong had been preparing to introduce the paired kidney donation (PKD) program since 2012, according to Chau Ka-foon, former co-chairperson of the Hospital Authority's Paired Kidney Donation Working Group. After extensive discussions, the city revised the law in 2018 and officially launched the program.

...

"two families that were successfully matched in 2020 canceled their planned surgeries due to personal concerns. Chau explains that the families might have worried that the organ received was of lower quality than the one they donated. It would also be a heavy blow if a family donating a kidney were unable to receive one if an operation were to fail.

...

"Attempts to swap organs among strangers have also encountered complex legal and technical problems.

"In Hong Kong's first-ever cross-family transplant in 2009, the medical team made a lot of efforts explaining to the Human Organ Transplant Board that the operation wasn't a transaction. "We repeatedly emphasized that the two families did not intend to exchange organs. It was simply the medical workers' proposal to raise the success rate of organ transplants," says Lo Chung-mau, chief surgeon of the operation and also director of the liver transplantation center at Queen Mary Hospital at that time.

...

"The 2019 social unrest and the following COVID-19 pandemic presented even greater challenges for Hong Kong's PKD program. In 2021, there were 26 eligible families in the city's organ matching pool.

"The Hospital Authority expects the number of participating families to climb to 50 to 100 in a few years. It will consider expanding the program to liver donations and collaborating with overseas matching pools. Chau hopes that kidney swaps will not be limited to just two families, and that multiple swaps among several families will be allowed to increase the chances of matching.

...

"Wang Haibo, a member of China's National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, says the pair-donation program is worth looking into and being discussed. The mainland is also conducting clinical research on paired-kidney donations. Alvin Roth, who won the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and developed a global kidney-exchange program, visited China before the COVID-19 pandemic to seek collaboration in this area, he recalls.

"Wang says both Hong Kong's and the mainland's organ donation rates still lag far behind those of developed economies. "They have reached a plateau and have made relatively adequate utilization of organ donations from the deceased. We have much room to develop in this regard."

"He says that while officials explore innovative approaches concerning living-organ donations, the priority should still focus on how to boost people's willingness to register as organ donors and better utilize the organs. "These are the so-called 'low hanging fruit'. It would be wise to concentrate our limited resources on the most rewarded option."

**********

First kidney exchange in Hong Kong

 The Standard has the story:

First paired kidney donation in Hong Kong completed successfully,   3 Nov 2021

"The first paired kidney donation has been successfully completed in Hong Kong, with the two patients involved discharged from hospital by the end of September.  

"The Hospital Authority launched the Paired Kidney Donation Pilot Programme in 2018, allowing cross matches between two patients waiting for kidney transplants and their respective family m"embers.  

"The families could not donate a kidney to their own loved ones due to incompatible blood groups or human leucocyte antigens.  

"The first case was successfully matched in June this year, and the two pairs of patients and their families were discharged from the hospital by the end of September. 

...

""The number of successful cadaveric and living kidney transplants is fewer than 80 per year, but the number of people waiting for transplant has reached 2,300," Lee said. "Each of them can only live for an average of 54 months longer if they fail to get a transplant.” 

...

"The team said the biggest challenge was to ensure the operations of both families are carried out at the same time. 

"In addition, to make sure that the patients would not know the identity of the other, there should also be special arrangements for admission registration and their entry into operating theaters. "

A non-simultaneous liver exchange chain at UCSF, and a brief history of liver exchange

 Living donor liver transplants are relatively uncommon in North America compared to Asia.  Liver exchange might help change that. Here are some reports of recent and not so recent liver exchanges, including a non-simultaneous exchange chain  at UCSF, and a simultaneous chain in Canada.  Expect more in the near future.

 (Non-simultaneous chains have become the backbone of kidney exchange in the U.S., so we may start to see longer chains of liver exchange as well.)

Here's the most recent report of a short non-directed donor chain:

Expanding living donor liver transplantation: Report of first US living donor liver transplant chain  by Hillary J. Braun  Ana M. Torres  Finesse Louie  Sandra D. Weinberg  Sang‐Mo Kang  Nancy L. Ascher  John P. Roberts, American Journal of Transplantation, First published: 10 November 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajt.16396

Abstract: "Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) enjoys widespread use in Asia, but remains limited to a handful of centers in North America and comprises only 5% of liver transplants performed in the United States. In contrast, living donor kidney transplantation is used frequently in the United States, and has evolved to commonly include paired exchanges, particularly for ABO‐incompatible pairs. Liver paired exchange (LPE) has been utilized in Asia, and was recently reported in Canada; here we report the first LPE performed in the United States, and the first LPE to be performed on consecutive days. The LPE performed at our institution was initiated by a nondirected donor who enabled the exchange for an ABO‐incompatible pair, and the final recipient was selected from our deceased donor waitlist. The exchange was performed over the course of 2 consecutive days, and relied on the use and compliance of a bridge donor. Here, we show that LPE is feasible at centers with significant LDLT experience and affords an opportunity to expand LDLT in cases of ABO incompatibility or when nondirected donors arise. To our knowledge, this represents the first exchange of its kind in the United States."

The paper says this about the timing of the surgeries:

"Other centers reporting LPE have performed the donor and recipient operations in four operating rooms simultaneously4, 5 which can be logistically challenging, but addresses concerns regarding simultaneity and equalizing risk. In our case, we performed the operations on sequential days. In doing so, we accepted the risk that, given a good outcome in Recipient 1 on the first day, Donor 2 (the “bridge” donor) might opt out of living donation at the last moment. Reappropriating terminology from the kidney paired exchange (KPE) literature, a bridge donor is defined as someone who donates more than 1 day after their intended recipient received a transplant.12 A recent paper discussing the feasibility of LPE in the United States emphasized that, in the early days of KPE, there was concern that the bridge donor might back out at the last minute and break the chain.13 As a result, kidney donor operations were initially attempted simultaneously. However, a 2018 review of 344 KPE chains between 2008 and 2016 revealed that only 5.6% of bridge donors broke the chain and the majority of these donors developed a medical issue during their time as a bridge donor that prohibited them from completing donation.12 Ultimately, because this occurrence was so infrequent, the authors concluded that simultaneous donor operating rooms for chains are unnecessary and may actually deter potential donors based on logistical issues. "

***********

And here's a report from Canada of a non-directed donor chain of liver exchange with all surgeries conducted simultaneously (also with the NDD donating to an incompatible patient-donor pair whose donor donated to a patient on the deceased donor waiting list).

Living donor liver paired exchange: A North American first  by Madhukar S. Patel  Zubaida Mohamed  Anand Ghanekar  Gonzalo Sapisochin  Ian McGilvray  Blayne A. Sayed  Trevor Reichman  Markus Selzner  Jed A. Gross  Zita Galvin  Mamatha Bhat  Les Lilly  Mark Cattral  Nazia Selzner, American Journal of Transplantation, First published: 10 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/ajt.16137 

Abstract: Paired organ exchange can be used to circumvent living donor‐recipient ABO incompatibilities. Herein, we present the first case of successful liver paired exchange in North America. This 2‐way swap required 4 simultaneous operations: 2 living donor hepatectomies and 2 living donor liver transplants. A nondirected anonymous living donor gift initiated this domino exchange, alleviating an ABO incompatibility in the other donor‐recipient pair. With careful attention to ethical and logistical issues, paired liver exchange is a feasible option to expand the donor pool for incompatible living liver donor‐recipient pairs.

*******

Here's a 2014 report from S. Korea:

Section 16. Update on Experience in Paired-Exchange Donors in Living Donor Liver Transplantation For Adult Patients at ASAN Medical Center by  Jung, Dong-Hwan1; Hwang, Shin1; Ahn, Chul-Soo1; Kim, Ki-Hun1; Moon, Deok-Bog1; Ha, Tae-Yong1; Song, Gi-Won1; Park, Gil-Chun1; Lee, Sung-Gyu, Transplantation: April 27, 2014 - Volume 97 - Issue - p S66-S69, doi: 10.1097/01.tp.0000446280.81922.bb

"Between January 2003 and December 2011, approximately 2,182 adult LDLT cases were included in this study. During this period, 26 paired-exchange donor LDLT cases were performed (1.2%).

"Results: Of the 26 paired-exchange donor LDLT cases, 22 pairs were matched due to ABO-incompatibility, and 4 pairs were matched because of cascade allocation of unrelated donors or relatively small graft volume to the recipients. A total of 28 living donors were included in the 26 paired-exchange donor LDLT cases because of inclusion of two dual-graft transplants. Elective surgery was performed in 22 cases, and urgent operation was performed in 4 cases. The overall 1-year and 5-year patient and graft survivals were both 96.2% and 90.1%, respectively.

"Conclusions : Our experience suggests that the paired-exchange donor program for adult LDLT seems to be a feasible modality to overcome donor ABO incompatibility."

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Here's a story of a liver exchange in Texas, between an incompatible pair and a compatible pair.

Saturday, December 28, 2019 A liver exchange in San Antonio, Texas

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Here's a liver exchange in Hong Kong between an incompatible pair and a compatible pair.

Friday, April 4, 2014 An unusual liver exchange in Hong Kong

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Here's a report from two major liver transplant centers in Hong Kong and S. Korea. The Korean team reported 16 donor exchanges conducted over a 6-year period.

Friday, April 9, 2010 Liver exchange

Kidney exchange scheduled to begin in Hong Kong

The South China Morning Post has the story:

New kidney donation scheme starts in October after change in Hong Kong law allows strangers to donate organs to patients
This is aimed at speeding up the long waiting time for a suitable organ and surgeries will be done at four of the city’s 43 public hospitals

"The paired organ donation arrangement, made legal after Hong Kong passed an amendment to its Human Organ Transplant Ordinance last month, allows a donor-patient pair who may not be a match for each other to donate organs to another donor-patient pair and vice versa, so that patients on both sides get the transplants they need.
...
"There is a huge supply-demand gap for kidney transplants in the city. As of June 30 this year, there were 2,214 patients on the transplant list in Hong Kong but each year there are only about 80 living or deceased donors. Two years ago the average waiting time for a kidney was over four years.
...
"Before the change in the law, strangers could not make live donations to transplant patients. Couples had to be married for more than three years and friends needed to obtain approval from the Department of Health’s Human Organ Transplant Board for live donations.

"Professor Philip Li, the chairman of the authority’s Central Renal Committee said in the UK and the Netherlands, the paired kidney donation programme was very mature and they were now having a very large number of successful matchings.

 “In Hong Kong, we are just starting, it will be quite a while before we actually see a significant effect,” Li said."

Kidney exchange amendment proposed for Hong Kong organ donation law

A bill introduced in Hong Kong clarifies that kidney exchange doesn't count as (forbidden) "inducement" to donate an organ under the law. (In this respect the bill seems to parallel the Norwood Act which amended the U.S. National Organ Transplant Act for the same reason.)  The bill excludes exchange of different organs (about which I recently blogged here.)

Human Organ Transplant (Amendment) Bill 2018 gazetted

"Hong Kong (HKSAR) -      The Government published in the Gazette today (April 27) the Human Organ Transplant (Amendment) Bill 2018, which seeks to allow for paired/pooled organ donation arrangements in Hong Kong.

     A spokesman for the Food and Health Bureau said, "Living donation offers an alternative for individuals awaiting transplantation from a deceased donor and increases the existing organ supply. There are however cases where the patient who needs an organ transplant has a living related donor who is willing but unable to donate because of an incompatible blood type or tissue type. One option would be paired donation."

     Under a paired donation arrangement, both medically approved incompatible donor-patient pairs donate organs to the other pair so that the patients in both pairs receive compatible organs.

Currently, as stipulated in section 5D(1)(c) of the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance (Cap 465) (HOTO), the donor has to give his consent to the proposed organ removal without coercion or the offer of inducement before any organ transplant between living persons can take place. Under a paired or pooled organ donation, a donor is willing to donate his/her organ to a stranger in exchange for another donor donating his/her organ to the first donor's originally intended recipient. While the term "inducement" is not specifically defined, the Government intends to amend HOTO to clear any legal ambiguity as to whether a paired organ donation involves "inducement".

     "The Hospital Authority is proposing a pilot Paired Kidney Donation Programme, participation in which will be voluntary.

The donor from the first incompatible donor-recipient pair ('dyad' as defined under the Amendment Bill) would donate to the recipient of the second dyad, and the donor from the second dyad would donate to the recipient of the first dyad," the spokesman said.

     The Amendment Bill will be introduced into the Legislative Council for scrutiny on May 9."
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Here's the bill: Human Organ Transplant (Amendment) Ordinance 2018.
"A bill to Amend the Human Organ Transplant Ordinance to provide that a donor is not to be regarded as having given consent to a proposed organ removal with the offer of inducement only because the consent has been given in consideration of a proposed organ transplant into a person chosen by the donor under a donation arrangement."

And here's the Legislative Council Brief.
Interestingly, it contains the following stipulation:
"6. In order to better describe the paired and pooled donation arrangements, we intend to introduce a new concept of a dyad, which is a group of two persons consisting of a donor and a beneficiary. The definitions for paired and pooled donation arrangements are also expressly set out. To avoid any impression or possibility that different types of organs could be exchanged under such
arrangements, organs to be removed and transplanted under the arrangements are restricted to be of the same kind and every removal and transplant is to be carried out by a registered medical practitioner in Hong Kong."

Liver exchange

Living Donor Exchange Poses New Option for Liver Transplantation "Two major transplant centers in Hong Kong and South Korea released results from their paired donor exchange programs for living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). A single paired exchange, performed by the Hong Kong team under emergency circumstances, was a success. The Korean team reported 16 donor exchanges conducted over a 6-year period were successful. Full details of this novel approach to organ transplantation appear in the April issue of Liver Transplantation."

And here are the two papers and abstracts: 

  Paired Donor Interchange to Avoid ABOIncompatible Living Donor Liver Transplantation, by See Ching Chan, Chung Mau Lo, Boon Hun Yong, Wilson J. C. Tsui, Kelvin K. C. Ng, and Sheung Tat Fan, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China 

"We report an emergency paired donor interchange living donor liver transplant performed on January 13, 2009. The 4 operations (2 liver transplants) were performed simultaneously. The aim was to avoid 2 ABO-incompatible liver transplants. One recipient in acute liver failure underwent transplantation in a high-urgency situation. The abdomen of the other recipient had severe adhesions from previous spontaneous bacterial peritonitis that rendered the recipient operation almost impossible. The ethical and logistical issues are discussed. Approaches adopted in anticipation of potential adverse outcomes are explained in view of the higher donor and recipient mortality and morbidity rates in comparison with kidney transplantation." Liver Transpl 16:478-481, 2010 

  Exchange Living Donor Liver Transplantation to Overcome ABO Incompatibility in Adult Patients, by Shin Hwang, Sung-Gyu Lee, Deok-Bog Moon, Gi-Won Song, Chul-Soo Ahn, Ki-Hun Kim, Tae-Yong Ha, Dong-Hwan Jung, Kwan-Woo Kim, Nam-Kyu Choi, Gil-Chun Park, Young-Dong Yu, Young-Il Choi, Pyoung-Jae Park, and Hea-Seon Ha, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea 

"ABO incompatibility is the most common cause of donor rejection during the initial screening of adult patients with end-stage liver disease for living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). A paired donor exchange program was initiated to cope with this problem without ABO-incompatible LDLT. We present our results from the first 6 years of this exchange adult LDLT program. Between July 2003 and June 2009, 1351 adult LDLT procedures, including 16 donor exchanges and 7 ABO-incompatible LDLT procedures, were performed at our institution. Initial donor-recipient ABO incompatibilities included 6 A to B incompatibilities, 6 B to A incompatibilities, 1 A to O incompatibility, 1 A+O (dual graft) to B incompatibility, 1 O to AB incompatibility, and 1 O to A incompatibility. Fourteen matches (87.5%) were ABO incompatible, but 2 (12.5%) were initially ABO-compatible. All ABO-incompatible donors were directly related to their recipients, but 2 compatible donors were each undirected and unrelated directed. After donor reassignment through paired exchange (n = 7) or domino pairing (n = 1), the donor-recipient ABO status changed to A to A in 6, B to B in 6, O to O in 1, A to AB in 1, A+O to A in 1, and O to B in 1, and this made all matches ABO identical (n = 13) or ABO-compatible (n = 3). Two pairs of LDLT operations were performed simultaneously on an elective basis in 12 and on an emergency basis in 4. All donors recovered uneventfully. Fifteen of the 16 recipients survived, but 1 died after 54 days. In conclusion, an exchange donor program for adult LDLT appears to be a feasible modality for overcoming donor-recipient ABO incompatibility."Liver Transpl 16:482-490, 2010. V