By Xinhua
Beijing : Chinese health experts, lawyers and moralists will meet in April to help develop a set of brain death criteria to facilitate human organ transplants, said a political advisor here on Friday.
Criteria on brain death will be discussed in an April conference co-held by the Organ Transplant Center (OTC), which is affiliated to the Ministry of Health, and China’s Red Cross Society, said Huang Jiefu, vice-minister of health.
Huang, also a liver transplant specialist, is here attending the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China’s top political advisory body.
“The conference will try to work out a definition of brain death that can be universally accepted in the medical circle, and help promote the spread of the concept and healthy human organ transplant in China,” Huang said.
Brain death is different from a permanent vegetative state, he said, adding that to declare a patient “brain dead” doesn’t mean to euthanatize him or her.
It is believed that setting criteria on brain death can bring about huge medical progress, especially for its potential to ease a shortage of human organs for transplants.
About 2 million Chinese need organ transplants each year and a great many die waiting, official figures show. Only 20,000 operations are conducted yearly.
Many countries have adopted the concept of brain death — defined by the absence of brain-stem reflex, no evidence of breathing and a total lack of consciousness.
Relevant discussions started in China since the 1980s, and “many experts consider it very urgent”, Huang said.
According to the current Chinese legal definition of death — 15 minutes after the cessation of the heartbeat and breathing, organs are irreparably damaged and can no longer be used for transplants, he explained.