Article title Dignity in organ donation – balancing stakeholders’ interests
Authors
Name of magazine Scientific-practical journal
«Medical Law» Ukrainian language
Issue 1/2013
Сторінки [20-32]
Annotation

The issues of transplantation as one of the most effective way of treating persons who are suffering from diseases at their terminal stages and need organ transplantation are elucidated. An accent is made on the fact that organ donation and transplantation are rather complex and sensitive issues, raising different ethical, moral, and practical problems, which result in increasing the number of persons’ death who are in the waiting list for organ donation. Current problems of organ donation in Great Britain are analyzed. The need of increasing the number of donors by making amendments to the Human Tissue Act 2004 as regards implementation of the presumption of consent to organ donation as well as the necessity to balance the stakeholders’ interests and increasing the level of their knowledge of the fact how important is their role in organ donation rates improvement. Current rates of organ donation in Great Britain; in particular statistic data of transplantation in this state during the period April 2010 till March 2012 are illustrated. The statistic data shows that in Great Britain as in other states of the world the amount of transplants despite increasing efforts to enhance organ donation over the years. The accent is made on the necessity for rethinking strategies for significant enhancement of availability of transplants.

The role of each stakeholder in organ donation, in particular: donor, donor’s family, recipient, the public, doctors, the Government as well as persons with commercial interests in donation are illustrated. The accent is also made on the role of the doctor who provides conservative treatment of the patient in order to ‘buy’ time for when there would be a donor.

Certain aspects of commercial donation with the focus on its participants such as organ dealers, commercial doctor, are elucidated. Moral issues of organ donation commercialization are illustrated. The article also highlights certain initiatives of the Government of Great Britain which are aimed at improvement donation rates during next 5 years, in particular the role of transplant coordinators and their task to bridge the gap between potential donors and their families on the one hand, and recipients and their families on the other. The role of medical law and bioethics in the aspect of amending legislation regulating organ and human tissue transplantation is analyzed in the article as well.

Keywords dignity, donor, life expectancy, organ donation, quality of life, recipient, transplantation.
References