Organ Donation and Transplantation stakeholder forum

Last month we were delighted to host our third stakeholder forum for representatives from the Organ Donation and Transplantation (ODT) sector.  

It has been over 12 months since The Human Tissue Act 2004 (Supply of Information about Transplants) Regulations 2024 came into force in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This requires relevant clinicians who work closely with patients that need, or have received, an organ transplant to report the following information to the HTA:    

• if they have a reasonable suspicion that an organ donation and transplantation related offence may have been committed under the Human Tissue Act or Modern Slavery legislation  
• if they are made aware that a patient has received an organ transplant outside the UK.    

As part of our regulatory function, to superintend compliance with the Regulations, the HTA considers information reported by relevant clinicians under the Regulations. In instances where it believes an offence may have been committed, the HTA will refer the case to the police.

We discussed the progress made since the regulations came into force and that all Living Donor Coordinators have received training on these requirements. Since 1 April 2024, the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) had received 44 reported cases.

During the meeting, we also discussed Scotland's forthcoming Regulations. We shared that HTA would issue a regulatory alert to sector colleagues to highlight this.  

The meeting also covered the Independent Assessor (IA) system and the number of annual living organ donation approvals. Once a living organ donor has undertaken all the necessary clinical investigations and the clinical team are satisfied that the donor is clinically fit to proceed, the case is referred to an IA. The IA role involves interviewing the donor and recipient to explore whether the requirements of the legislation have been met.  

The HTA now receives approximately 1,200 cases annually. This represents a significant increase from 2006/07 when the HTA approved 430 living organ donations.

We thanked our ODT colleagues for their contributions and insight in the meeting and look forward to speaking with them again soon.