Amount won't be so big that it is seen as an inducement but may be at least a five-figure sum
By
Salma Khalik, Health Correspondent
Asked how the compensation scheme is likely to work, Mr Khaw said the idea is for the recipient to provide the compensation to the donor. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM
THE law will be changed early next year to allow people who donate their kidneys to get monetary compensation from the recipient or a voluntary organisation.
The amount should not be so large that it is seen as an inducement, said Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan when he announced this yesterday.
He hinted that the sum will be at least five figures, possibly six. The actual amount of compensation will be left to a committee which will be set up by the Ministry of Health to look into this.
Mr Khaw pointed out that the World Health Organisation and countries like the United States believe it is ethical to compensate donors so they do not suffer for their act of altruism.
He said the amount of compensation is not 'hard-wired' into the legislation of countries that allow it, such as the US, Britain and Australia. Singapore will follow suit.
'The ethical community, including the World Health Organisation, has clarified that it is ethical to compensate, so long as the compensation amount is not so big as to induce,' he said.
Mr Khaw plans to amend the Human Organ Transplant Act to allow this change.
More than 1,000 people face organ failure here each year.
It is currently against the law for kidney or liver donors to be compensated. Both donor and recipient can be fined up to $10,000 and jailed for up to a year or both.
The upcoming change comes on the heels of a high-profile case involving former retail magnate Tang Wee Sung.
In September, he was jailed for a day and fined $17,000 for organ trading and for lying under oath that a proposed donor was a relative.
Earlier in July, an Indonesian who failed to sell his organ to Mr Tang was jailed for two weeks and fined $1,000. He was to have received $23,700 for his kidney from the $300,000 Mr Tang paid an agent.
Another Indonesian who received almost $30,000 for selling his kidney here was jailed for 14 weeks and fined $2,000.
The case sparked a national debate on whether it was ethical to buy an organ.
Yesterday, Mr Khaw reiterated that it was not ethical to do so. But he added that Singapore, like countries all over the world, faces a severe shortage in organs for transplants. As a result, many people die each year.
Asked how the compensation scheme is likely to work, he said the idea is for the recipient to provide the compensation to the donor.
But if the recipient is poor, voluntary welfare organisations like the National Kidney Foundation could step in to help, said Mr Khaw, who spoke to reporters at VivoCity after launching the Live On campaign to encourage organ donation.
He said the details would have to be worked out, but a recipient could find his own donor. It would be up to the hospital's ethics committee to agree to the transplants, as is the case now.
He said the law will allow compensation 'so long as it's done within an ethical framework, and you convince the ethics committee that you are not pressuring him or giving under-the-table inducement'.
Both the chief executive officers of the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and Changi General Hospital (CGH), who were at the event, felt that compensating a donor was fair.
Professor Ang Chong Lye of SGH said kidney donors now either have to pay higher insurance premiums or have their remaining kidney excluded from health insurance. So, they do suffer a loss.
Mr T.K. Udairam of CGH warned that while it was fair to compensate donors, Singapore has to ensure that it stays away from 'the slippery slope' that veers towards inducing the poor to sell their organs.
The minister himself touched on this when he said that a suitable compensation for a Singaporean might be considered a huge amount for someone from a poorer country.
These problems will hopefully be thrashed out during the weeks of public consultation ahead.
