50% rise in organ donations planned

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Health Minister Alan Johnson gave backing for 14 recommendations intended to increase UK organ donation rates by 50% over the next five years.

Dedicated teams to retrieve organs 24 hours a day will speed up the process while the number of transplant co-ordinators will be doubled to around 200.

The NHS will also be told to "embrace organ donation as a usual, not an unusual event".

One recommendation is for brain stem tests to be used on all appropriate patients, whether they are potential organ donors or not. These tests are used to confirm if a patient is brain dead.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said work would begin immediately to implement the plans, with £11 million of funding next year and more to follow.

The controversial issue of presumed consent did not form part of recommendations from the Organ Donation Taskforce. Sub-committees are looking specifically at the issue and will report in the summer. The Human Tissue Act 2004 states that no organs and tissue for transplantation can be taken without the consent of the deceased or their relatives.

Presumed consent means hospitals can take organs unless people specifically opt out of the scheme. In practice, families are also consulted before organs are removed.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has signalled his backing for the programme in Spain, where there are more organ donors per head of population than anywhere else in the world.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph last weekend, Mr Brown said: "A system of this kind seems to have the potential to close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery in the UK and the limits imposed by our current system of consent."