Nurses bow as they pay a silent tribute to a deceased patient who was willing to donate her organs at a hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, Nov. 22, 2012. (Photo : REUTERS)
China's former vice-minister of health Huang Jiefu claimed that the demand for organs in the country is just twice and not 150 times more than the supply, contrary to reports in the past years.
Currently, around 22,000 patients are on the organ transplant waiting list, with 10,000 to 12,000 organ transplant operations expected to be made in 2015.
From January to March 4 this year, there were 937 major organs donated, according to Huang.
China's Ministry of Health reported in 2012 that around 1.5 million people in the country need organ transplants.
Huang disputed that number and said that only around 300,000 out of those are in real need of a transplant, since some of them are not suitable for surgery, such as liver cancer patients.
"Many kidney disease patients can live for years relying on dialysis, and some liver cancer patients can live by cutting parts of their liver," Zhu Jiye, director of the Organ Transplantation Center of Peking University.
Insufficient medical service capacity also affects the number of organ transplants doctors can perform annually, with China only having several hundred doctors able to perform the surgeries.
The country witnessed an increase in the number of the organ donations since it set up a pilot project in 2010.
The number of organs donated dramatically rose to 4,681 organs in 2014 from 88 donated in 2010. The number of people who volunteered to donate organs was also up to 14,636 to 2014 from 1,087 in 2010 .
Nonetheless, Zhu said that the biggest problem is still the lack of organ donations.
China has stopped harvesting organs from executed prisoners this year.
