Germany's Health Minister Monday pushed an initiative to boost the availability of transplant organs by making everyone a potential donor after death unless they have expressly opted out.
An organ donation scandal that rocked Germany several years ago is still having ripple effects as too few people are signing up to become donors to meet medical needs.
New rules to encourage people to donate their organs take effect on Thursday, yet interest has been stagnant since the start of the year – and two scandals surrounding the corrupt allocation of donated organs will not have helped.
An investigation into people waiting for donated livers being pushed up the waiting list has been launched at a Munich clinic following scandals in two other German hospitals.
A boy with cystic fibrosis is starting a new life after German doctors performed the country’s first double living lung transplant, giving him a lung from each of his mother and father.
The donor organ waiting list scandal unfolding in a German hospital, where it seem doctors changed medical records to push patients up the lists, could date back nearly 20 years, it emerged on Monday.
A leading German doctor is under investigation for allegedly changing medical records to make people appear sicker than they were – bumping them to the top of organ transplant lists ahead of desperately ill people.
Everyone living in Germany will be asked this year, and then at regular intervals, whether they want to donate organs after their death. Parliament voted on Friday in favour of a new law designed to encourage people to consider donation.
In an exceptionally emotional debate, characterized by unusual unity across party lines, the German parliament took a first step Thursday toward approving an organ donation law.
Every person in Germany would be actively asked if they want to be an organ donor under plans being drafted by lawmakers to boost the rate of donation.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, parliamentary group leader for the Social Democratic Party, wants the law changed so that every German is asked once in their lives whether they would be prepared to donate their organs after they die.
