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Discussions on organ donation scheme
20/09/2007
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon today welcomed the Secretary of State for Health's decision to ask the UK-wide Organ Donation Task Force to explore the issues around presumed consent.
Presumed consent sets the presumption that everyone wanted to donate their organs after death for transplantation, unless they had registered an objection.
Ms Sturgeon said:
"We have always welcomed debate on this issue, since such a change would need strong backing by both the public and the health professions before it could be made to work.
"The Organ Donation Task Force has been exploring the current barriers to transplantation and is therefore well placed to take on this piece of work.
"Organs available for transplantation are allocated on a UK-wide basis. It is for that reason the Task Force has a UK-wide remit. The work on presumed consent needs to be undertaken across the UK, to avoid the risk of different systems developing in different parts of the UK.
"Those who advocate a strengthening of the current system of opting in, and those who favour a change to a system of presumed consent act on the wish to increase the number of organs, for the sake of all those who are on the waiting list for a new organ.
"I very much share Alan Johnson's aspiration that organ donation rates in every part of the UK should match the rates in other European countries such as Spain."