ORGAN TRANSPLANTS PERFORMED IN SINGAPORE

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ORGAN TRANSPLANTS PERFORMED IN SINGAPORE: 3.

Dr Lam Pin Min asked the Minister for Health if he will provide (i) the number of kidney, liver and cornea transplants performed in Singapore over the past three years and their breakdown into cadaveric and live donor organs; and (ii) the average waiting list for each organ type.

Mr Khaw Boon Wan: Sir, over the past three years, there were 228 kidney transplants involving Singaporeans, and 63% of these were from deceased donors. During the same period, there

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were 33 liver transplants, 64% from deceased donors. There were 271 cornea transplants, all of course from cadavers.

Currently, the numbers of patients waiting for cadaveric organs are 563 for kidney, nine for liver and 25 for cornea.

Dr Lim Wee Kiak (Sembawang): Sir, I would like to ask the Minister whether, apart from the removal of the age limit for cadaveric transplant, there are other measures that the Ministry would be looking into, eg, some form of bereavement fund or financial compensation for the cadaveric donors' families to encourage more of these cadaveric donors.

The second point is that, with the current improvement in terms of technology, what kind of effort has been put into more research, so as to shrink the dialysis machine down to a size small enough to be implanted in the body. With the membrane technology that we have now, are we pushing in this particular direction?

Mr Khaw Boon Wan: Sir, as I said in an earlier reply, I have occasionally received requests from religious bodies and some charities which wanted to promote altruistic donations. They said, "Can we be allowed to compensate the families, in the case of cadaveric donors, including in dollar terms?" These are cautious people and they worry whether they will be flouting any HOTA rules. I am studying this idea. I think we should encourage such third party, particularly if they are charities and religious bodies who want to promote altruistic donations. I think the more you can break the direct relationship between the donor and the donee, a lot of the unethical considerations can be minimised. This is a possible option that we should explore, and I am studying it carefully with a view to doing so.

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As for research on how to eliminate or reduce the impact of this problem, that is ongoing globally, including to a certain extent, in Singapore. I remember the early days when I first joined the Ministry of Health when dialysis machines reminded me of mainframe computers, big machines, but they have shrunk over the years and now there are a lot of efforts to shrink it further. In parallel, there is also research ongoing to look at other non-human organ possibility and substitutes. We wish such researchers early success but, meanwhile, the problem exists and I think the practical problem of this has to be resolved one way or the other.