The first audit of potential organ donors from intensive care facilities in hospitals all over the Republic is about to begin.
The survey will gather information on the number of brain stem deaths occurring (ie deaths where the patient is kept alive by life support), the incidence of families being asked to donate organs and the number of organ donations that result.
The audit will be the first major task carried out by the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Department of Health and Children's Working Group on Organ Procurement chaired by Dr Freda O'Neill of the HSE Population Health Office.
Speaking at the launch yesterday by Minister for Health Mary Harney of Organ Donor Awareness Week - which runs from March 31st to April 7th - chairman of the Irish Donor Network and chief executive of the Irish Kidney Association (IKA) Mark Murphy said this audit had taken an extraordinary long time to establish primarily because there was no apparatus in place to seek blanket ethical approval for research from hospitals in Ireland.
"The Irish Donor Network assumes that one inevitable conclusion of the working group will be the recommendation that an Irish organ transplant authority be established. We do not have an iota when that might happen. Ireland seems to be the only EU country without such an authority managing transplantation and the only country where transplantation is not enshrined in legislation," he said.
Mr Murphy said he was sure there were a lot of missed opportunities for organ donation in Irish hospitals and the results of this long overdue survey would confirm this. He said Ireland needed to follow the Spanish example of maximising the number of potential donors from brain stem death.
A HSE spokeswoman said the Review of Donor Organ Procurement Services was a working group established by the HSE Population Health Directorate to review organ procurement and transplantation practice in the Republic for each of the major organs, including patient selection, governance and performance monitoring.
She said: "Between November 2006 and January 2007, three hospitals with intensive care units agreed to undertake a pilot study for a potential donor audit. Having completed the pilot study, the Review of Donor Organ Procurement Services are now working with the National Hospitals Office and will engage in further consultation with acute hospitals to commence a national study in April."
Mr Murphy also highlighted the concerns of the Irish Kidney Association in relation to the delay in the publishing of the National Renal Strategy Review commissioned by the Department of Health in 2001 to identify service needs to meet the growing demand for renal services. The report was delivered to the HSE in 2006 and the IKA is anxious that its findings be approved and implemented.
