UK Doctors Criticise Rules Of Baby Organ Donation

Doctors at Great Ormond Street children's hospital are calling for the rules to be changed to allow parents to donate the organs of newborn babies who die, in the hope of saving the lives of other sick children.

Guidelines in the UK do not permit babies to be certified as brain-stem dead under the age of two months, which is not the case in most western European countries, the US and Australia.That means that the organs of babies who were not born prematurely but who later die in intensive care, cannot be transplanted to help other babies and small children.

Dr Joe Brierley, a consultant in the intensive care unit at GOSH, has investigated the impact a change the UK rules could have. He said: "The other countries have guidelines that say from around term you can reliable make that definition that someone has died. In the UK, the original guidelines were written long before organ donation was a possibility for children and their families and they were really just cautious and rather conservative."

(CVS/CD)