Organs we donate go to foreigners
LIFE-SAVING organs donated in the UK are being used for foreign patients while Britons languish or even die on waiting lists.
In the past two years, the organs of 50 NHS donors have been given to patients from outside the country who paid for private operations in Britain.
Leading surgeons and patient groups hit out at the practice and demanded UK citizens get priority.
New documents reveal that 40 patients from Cyprus and Greece received transplants in NHS hospitals, paid for by their governments. Others came from non-EU countries like China, Libya, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
About 8,000 Britons are on NHS transplant lists and many die while waiting for an organ.
The Healthcare Commission watchdog said British organs going to foreigners was allowed under EU law.
A spokesman for King’s College hospital in London, which gave 19 overseas patients liver transplants, said: “EU citizens have the same entitlement to treatment under the NHS as UK patients.”
But Prof Peter Friend, of the British Transplantation Society, said: “If there is a surfeit of UK residents awaiting transplant, they should have priority. We do not have a European organ donation system. It is a UK system.”
