The Hong Kong government leader said police would investigate thousands of people asking to opt out of the organ donation system, something he condemned as an attempt to undermine the scheme.
The organ donation registry system in the Chinese region has received nearly 5,800 requests to leave since December, when the regional government raised the possibility of establishing a mutual assistance program for organ transplants with China.
Officials argued that the China link could be activated once medical staff could not find a suitable patient in Hong Kong to receive a donated organ.
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu described the requests as suspicious at a news conference Tuesday: “I strongly condemn those who try to harm this noble system that saves lives. (…) This is an outrageous act.”
Earlier, a government spokesman said in a statement that the requests were an attempt by “a small number of individuals” to undermine the reputation of the system and “increase the administrative workload”.
More than half of the exit requests were considered invalid because they were duplicate requests or came from people who never chose to participate in the organ donation registry.
The statement explained that internet users had recently championed the idea that potential organ donors should scrutinize the identities of transplant recipients, calling for a mass withdrawal from the system, while also expressing doubts about their connection to China’s transplant system.
In 2015, China banned organ harvesting from executed prisoners, the country’s main source of organs for decades. The only source of organs for transplant became voluntary donation, which was implemented in 2010.
Organ donation is limited in mainland China as well as in Hong Kong and Macau by the widespread belief in reincarnation, which motivates much of the population to choose to keep the body intact.
Out of a population of about seven million people, more than 357,000 are registered in Hong Kong’s organ donation system.
Source: DN
