Constitutional complaint against German transplant system - trend reversal for organ donation

Constitutional complaint against German transplant system - trend reversal for organ donation

The number of organ donors in Germany fell again by 6% in the first quarter of this year compared to the previous year, despite the changes in the law in 2019 and 2020. Due to this alarming Situation, the Protransplant alliance plans to submit a constitutional complaint. At a press conference, the initiators practiced sharp criticism of the German transplant system and Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach.

Prof. Dr. Josef Franz Lindner, expert in medical and health law, said that the legislator is obliged to create legal framework conditions to increase the number of donor organs. If the measures against the lack of organ are insufficient, the obligation to protect is violated. A possible measure would be, for example, the introduction of an objection regulation for which NRW Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann is currently making a draft law.

There are serious differences in the clinics regarding organ donation. Data from the German university clinics show that ten times more organ donors are found in Freiburg than in Marburg, Jena and Erlangen. This raises the question of whether the legal obligation to examine the possibility of an organ transplant in all people with irreversible brain death is actually implemented anywhere.

The transplant system in Germany is not under state supervision, which makes it easy for those involved, the responsibility. The system still works partially due to the voluntary commitment of those affected who do educational work and distribute organ donation cards. Nevertheless, the organ donation numbers are at a low point, despite the reforms of 2019 and 2020.

The patients are the victims of this situation. Andreas Gässler, who lives with an artificial heart, emphasized that he had long since received a transplant in other European countries. Dialysis patient Ulrike Feuerhack had to wait nine years for her first kidney transplant, while it would only have taken one to two years in other European countries.

Prof. Dr. Rainer Blasczyk, head of the Institute for Transfusion Medicine and Transplant Engineering at the Hanover Medical School, emphasized that a constitutional action is urgently necessary. The discrepancy between Germany and neighboring countries is so great that a violation of the obligation to protect is obvious. Compared to other countries, Germany only runs 40 transplants per million inhabitants, while in other countries it is twice to three times as many. The death rates on the waiting lists for a liver or lung are more than twice as high compared to other Euro transplant countries.

The latest progress in the Xeno transplantation is still in the experimental stage and therefore do not offer any way.

The most important information about organ donation in Germany is summarized in the following table:

| Year | Number of organ donors | Number of transplants |
| —— | ————————– |---———————- |
| 2018 | 797 | 2.997 |
| 2019 | 932 | 3.410 |
| 2020 | 877 | 3.091 |
| 2021 | 822 (in the first quarter) | (not yet available) |

These figures show the decline in organ donations in recent years and confirm the urgent need for action.

The constitutional complaint of the Protransplant alliance is directed against the German transplant system and Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach. The alliance calls for an improvement in the legal framework, a possible introduction of a contradiction regulation and a better implementation of organ donation in the German clinics.

Source: Bündnispronplanplant/OTS