Donate your organs and we'll pay your funeral costs: New NHS plans to tackle shortage of volunteers
- 'Reasonable' funeral costs of between £1,500 and £5,000 could be met
- Report also recommends bigger payouts for egg and sperm donation in fertility treatment
By
Jenny Hope
The desperate shortage of suitable transplant organs has left 8,000 people in the UK on a waiting list for a life-saving operation. And while it takes an average of three years for a suitable donor to become available, three people on the list die every day.
With a typical funeral costing thousands of pounds, the proposal for the NHS to pay ‘reasonable’ costs of between £1,500 and £5,000 could be an incentive for many to join the Organ Donor Register.
The gift of life: Those who sign up for organ donation could have their own funerals paid for by the NHS in a bid to boost number on the donor register
Easing the burden: The NHS could be willing to pay 'reasonable' costs of a funeral for those whose donated organs have helped others
However concerns have already been raised that families could end up ‘leaning on’ their sick relatives to sign up to the scheme to save funeral expenses.
The idea is outlined in a report from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which has spent 18 months investigating ways of boosting the supply of organs.
But it ruled out a change in the law to allow payment to donors, saying that it was important to retain the principle of altruism as it ‘underpins important community values’.
Its report also opposes an ‘opt-out’ scheme in which it is assumed that everyone consents to donation unless they remove their name from the register or their family objects after their death. Although a similar system is being considered in Wales, the report says ‘robust research’ is needed into whether it really makes a difference to donor rates.
Improvements: Donations have increased 25 per cent in recent years, partly due to more efficient running of hospital systems
Currently the Organ Donor Register is at a record level, with 18 million people – about 30 per cent of the population – signed up, but the NHS is aiming to increase this to 25 million by 2013. Black and Asian people often have to wait three times longer for a transplant, because of a shortage of donors in those communities.
Keith Rigg, a transplant surgeon at Nottingham University Hospital and one of the report’s authors, said they had ruled out direct financial incentives to encourage donors to join the register but believed that payment of funeral expenses by the NHS – an idea suggested by members of the public – was ethically acceptable as only the family would benefit. He suggested that the NHS run a pilot project which involved payment of ‘reasonable’ expenses to anyone who signed up to the register and donated organs.
But Roger Goss, co-director of Patient Concern, said: ‘We worry that offering funeral expenses in return for organs may result in families leaning on sick relatives to donate, because it can save thousands of pounds.
‘The number of cases that already reach the Court of Protection because those holding power of attorney treat their charges as cash cows should be a warning that this is only too likely.’
Women donating eggs for research should also get a fee on top of expenses, in much the same way that patients testing medicines are rewarded.
Report chairman Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern said: ‘People who are willing to donate for other people’s treatment should not be left out of pocket.’
Urgent need: Every day three people die while waiting for an organ donor
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