On Friday, 664 clerics in the archdiocese of Seoul signed organ donor pledges. It was beautiful to see them act as disciples of Jesus, who shared his flesh and blood at the Last Supper. The head of the Chogye Buddhist Order demonstrated he was a true man of religion when he died last year, because in accordance with his wishes, his organs were donated rather than his being given a traditional Buddhist funeral.
The number of donation pledges has increased dramatically since 2000. That year, there were 1,200 pledges; in 2003, there were 9,874, and in 2005 there were 70,693. In March some 14,000 Koreans expressed their desire to have their organs donated at a single event held to recruit more donors.
However, in the meantime, actual transplant surgeries are not increasing in number. Last year, there were only about 2,000 organ transplants. The problem is that while more people want to share the gift of life, the system still does not make it that simple.
Types of organ donations include organ giving by a living donor, postmortem organ donation, and donations by a person who is brain dead. They say you can save the lives of 9 people for every one brain dead donor, but in Korea this procedure is far from common. In Spain in 2004, there were 33.7 donations from brain-dead donors for every one million people in the country's population, 21.7 in the United States, and 20.0 in France, but only 1.8 in Korea, where only 86 out of approximately 2,400 brain dead individuals had their organs donated to persons who needed them.
There are several reasons for this. To begin with, in Korea, even if someone has pledged his organs for donation, they cannot be transplanted if his family does not approve. In France and Austria, it is assumed a person intended to be an organ donor unless he previously stated his refusal to one. In the United States, you express your willingness to donate on your driver’s license. In Korea, everything from declaring a person brain dead to finding a recipient and choosing a hospital for the transplant surgery is controlled by the national government’s Korean Network for Organ Sharing, making efficient transplants and voluntary donation very difficult.
There should be no obstacles to the sharing of life. Thousands of people in South Korea stand to benefit.
[Editorial] Bureaucracy makes organ donation difficult |
