After four years of dialysis, Luk received a call from the hospital telling her one afternoon she would get a new organ that evening from a donor who was brain dead, someone she said she will eternally be gratefully for.
“I feel like the donor has never left this world, because I am still alive. The donor’s kidney is in my body, I am living for the donor, so I need to live life to the fullest, I am extending the donor’s life,” she said.
Luk has even gotten pregnant after the transplant surgery, which nurse consultant Lee Shuk-hang – who had treated the kidney transplant patient – described as rare.
For Lau Po-choi – who was diagnosed with congenital kidney atrophy – his new organ came from his own daughter around 10 years ago, after living-donor kidney transplant became an option for him. Lau, in his 60s, said he had trouble coming to terms with accepting a kidney from his daughter.
“She is young, and I am old…It felt like a waste and I worried that it would be difficult to get a new one if something happens in the future,” Lau said.
More than 2,430 late-stage kidney failure patients were waiting for a new organ as of September, with an average waiting time of five years and nine months. The number of kidney donations dropped from 72 in 2021 to 42 in the first nine months of this year, which the Hospital Authority said is not ideal.
Hong Kong has less than five organ donations for every one million people – one of the lowest rates worldwide, according to Lui Sing-leung, the chairman of the authority’s central renal committee.
“People in Hong Kong are, compared to Western countries, relatively more conservative in terms of the idea of preserving the body after death. People tend to want to have the whole body after death,” Lui said.
“It’s very often the potential donor’s relatives are not sure about the wish of the potential donor, and therefore, they [cannot] decide [whether] to donate the organ.”
He also noted that a surge in withdrawals from the Centralised Organ Donation Register earlier this year did not have a huge impact on the actual number of organ donations.
Lui added that it is less likely for kidneys to be sent across the border under a potential organ transplant mutual assistance mechanism with the mainland, compared to other organs such as hearts and livers, because it would be easy for patients to be matched with a donated kidney locally.
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