Effort to increase organ donors launched today

Organ donation campaigner Andy Tookey has launched a private donor register with the aim of giving participants prioritised access to other participants' organs.

The aim of the "Lifesharers" register is to give people an incentive to offer their organs for donation, hopefully boosting New Zealand's poor organ donor rate.

Mr Tookey, whose young daughter Katie suffers from the rare condition bilary artesia and needs a liver transplant, said New Zealand's donor rates were currently moving in the wrong direction.

The number of organ donations in 2006 was the lowest for 14 years, while the number of people going on to transplant waiting lists was growing rapidly.

Under the scheme, which was first started about four years ago in the United States, registered members' organs are offered to other registered members who need them.

If there is no match then they go to the next person on the organ waiting list.

But Mr Tookey acknowledged the register had no legal standing, meaning family members would still be able to refuse requests from doctors to take their relative's organs.

It would also mean that if family members acquiesced to the request they would have no power over who the organs went to.

Mr Tookey said those problems could be overcome if the Government took over the scheme.

However, the Government has rejected the idea of an organ donor register.

The idea was considered by the health select committee, when it considered the recently passed Human Tissue Act, but it concluded there was no compelling evidence it would boost donation rates.

National MP Jackie Blue, who hosted today's presentation at Parliament and failed to win support for her member's bill which would have set up a register, said National was also cautious about the idea.

It would review the need for a register in about three years' time after seeing whether the official body overseeing donations, Organ Donation NZ , had made progress in boosting the donor rate.

Mr Tookey said doctors who suggested it was repugnant to give out organs based on membership of a group rather than an individual's need, needed to look at the larger picture.

That picture was that if an incentive was offered that boosted donation rates, more lives would be saved.

NZPA