INTERNATIONAL ORGAN DONATION AWARENESS - CANADA - XXIII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE TRANSPLANTATION SOCIETY

Canada lags in number of organ donors

More donors here would cut wait times, curb transplant tourism, expert says

By Damian Inwood, The Province

Canada needs national organ-transplant rules to boost the number of donors --and help cut "transplant tourism," says Dr. Graham Sher, CEO of Canadian Blood Services.

"We need to set standards of performance saying, 'In my region of the country, I will commit to so many donations per year and so many transplants per year,'" he says.

Sher spoke Monday after a panel discussion on organ trafficking at the Transplantation Society's 23rd International Congress in Vancouver.

A set of recommendations will be presented to federal and provincial health ministers by the end of this year, he said.

The panel heard that Canadians donate organs at a rate of 14.5 per million of population, compared with Spain's 34 per million.

"In Canada, there's no accountability over whether one part of the country collects 10 organs per million or 25 organs per million," Sher added.

Another key recommendation is to have special hospital teams ready to talk to families about obtaining organs from their loved ones when they die, Sher said. "Nobody's trained and nobody's held to account for having those conversations," he said. "Countries like Spain have made this a cornerstone of their program, with a professional workforce that can have the right conversation at the right time and optimize the donation."

Sher said Canada also needs better data to measure its performance. He said there aren't even statistics on how many Canadians go offshore for organ transplants.

There are currently 4,500 Canadians on transplant waiting lists and 260 patients die annually while awaiting transplants.

"Transplant tourism is a symptom of countries not being self-sufficient," added Sher. "If there are more organs and shorter waiting lists, people are less inclined to take the very difficult step of going outside the country and buying an organ, which is the unethical practice of transplant tourism."