China has significantly raised awareness about posthumous organ donation among its people and improved its organ transplantation technologies, with the number of registered organ donors reaching nearly 6.2 million and the number of annual organ transplants continuing to rank the second-highest in the world, officials and experts said last week.

However, they said that China still has a much lower rate of organ donors — the number of donors per million of the population — when compared with some developed countries, and hospitals capable of conducting transplantations are unevenly distributed.

More efforts are needed to boost awareness, direct quality medical resources to the grassroots and step up social assistance for those in need, they said.

Data released by the Red Cross Society of China shows that nearly 1.54 million people registered as organ donors last year, compared with around 1.52 million in 2021 and 1.01 million in 2020.

The total number of registered donors now exceeds 6.18 million, and the majority are young and middle-aged adults, age 45 and below, said Hou Fengzhong, head of the China Organ Donation Administrative Center, which is administered by the Red Cross Society of China.

"Public awareness about organ donation has markedly increased," Hou said during an event paying tribute to organ donors held in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, from Thursday through Saturday.

In 2010, China began a voluntary organ donation trial program. In 2015, voluntary posthumous donation became the only legal source of organ transplants in the country. The program has conducted 135,000 organ transplants involving about 44,000 posthumous organ donors in 13 years.

Progress 'no easy task'

Guo Yanhong, director of the National Health Commission's medical emergency department, said that last year, China completed nearly 17,600 organ transplants, thanks to about 5,600 donors, up 5.2 percent and 6.75 percent, respectively, from 2021.

"Having achieved this progress in spite of COVID-19 outbreaks was no easy task," she said.

Since 2016, the numbers of organ donors, organ donations and transplantation surgeries in the country have continued to rank the second-highest in the world and the highest in Asia.

"Through evaluations of surgical complications, we also see that the quality of organ transplantations in China ranks high in the world," she said.

However, Guo noted that the number of organ donors per million people in China stands at around 3.98. The United States and Spain have the highest number of about 41 donors per million.

"There are 183 hospitals qualified to conduct organ transplantations (in China), which are not enough to meet the demands of a large population," she said.

Guo called for mobilizing the whole society to raise awareness about organ donation, improving fairness, transparency and efficiency of its organ procurement system and directing high-quality healthcare resources to community levels.

She also called for building an effective assistance system for organ donors and their families, as well as for poor people in need of organ transplants.

Hou, head of the China Organ Donation Administrative Center, said the center will further boost awareness drives and provide convenient registration services. This year, the number of new registered donors is expected to exceed 1.2 million.

The center will also further ramp up memorial activities for organ donors and intensify humanitarian care for their families, Hou said.