CHINA TO BAN USE OF EXECUTED PRISONERS' ORGANS FOR TRANSPLANTS

the last country in the world systematically harvesting organs from executed prisoners - is to ban the practice next year according to a senior official.
By mid-2014, all hospitals licensed for transplants must stop using organs from executed prisoners and only use those voluntarily donated and allocated through a fledging national transplant and donor system.
Courts which oversee executions have been told they are no longer allowed to offer organs to hospitals.
Mr Huang Jiefu, a former deputy health minister and Australian-trained transplant surgeon who is heading China's organ transplant reform said that a fall in executions meant prisoners' organs could no longer be relied on.
"China has meted out fewer and fewer death sentences, so reliance on death-row inmates' donations will become a dead end," he said.
"So we must rely on voluntary donations," he added.
He admitted the problem of an organ black market was not something the country will easily resolve.
"The illegal trade of human organs will be inevitable in Chinese society in the years to come," said Mr Huang.
"The huge demand for organs is one of the causes. As long as there's a gap between supply and demand, illegal organ trafficking won't disappear, but the government will continue to crack down on it," he told Reuters.