China to ditch use of death-row donors

China will abolish the transplanting of organs from executed prisoners within five years and try to encourage more citizens to donate, a top health official has said.

Rights groups call transplants from condemned prisoners a form of abuse and allege the government, which executes more people than any other nation, forces them to donate organs. The regime, however, claims most prisoners volunteer, and that the change is being made because inmates are less healthy than the general population.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted vice-health minister Huang Jiefu as saying that prisoner organ donations were not ideal because condemned inmates had high rates of fungal and bacterial infection.

“Therefore, the long-term survival rates for people with transplanted organs in China are always below those of people in other countries,” Mr Huang said.

Organ donations from condemned prisoners will be abolished within five years, he told a conference in Hangzhou in eastern China, while a national donation scheme would be established.

China refuses to say how many prisoners it puts to death each year. Amnesty International estimates it is in the thousands, far more than the executions in all other countries combined. One human rights group estimated China executed at least 5,000 people a year, compared with just 46 in the US in 2010.