Blood agency will build national computer registries for organ donation

A combined investment of $35 million over the next five years by the federal, provincial and territorial ministries of health will allow the Canadian Council for Donation and Transplantation to merge with Canadian Blood Services, which will expand its mandate beyond blood services and into organ and tissue donation and transplantation.

"CBS has a done a good job, I think, in terms of getting the blood system back on track, they have a lot of infrastructure capability that we can leverage," said Frank Markel, president and CEO of Trillium Gift of Life, which oversees organ and tissue donations in Ontario.

"I expect them to work very co-operatively with their provincial partners and it's going to be good for everybody," he said in an interview Wednesday.

The provinces and territories, except Quebec, will provide half the total funding and collaborate with Canadian Blood Services to create national registries to more quickly match donors and patients in need.

Markel said the registry that has the greatest degree of urgency will deal with high status recipients - those people who are very close to death as they wait for a liver, heart or lung - and less often, a kidney.

"We have for some time been sharing organs across the country, even internationally," Markel said. "We have understandings that if there's a high status liver recipient waiting in Edmonton and we have a donor in Ontario, that the liver from our donor goes there on a priority basis."

But he said some of those agreements are somewhat informal, and are done at meetings of societies of transplant physicians.

"I think CBS will be in a better position to make those agreements standard. But more important, we've been operating till now with rather rudimentary information systems - we get information by fax, we get it by telephone."

What's needed, and what CBS will build, is a computer system that everyone can access so they'll know on an up-to-date basis where the high status patients are located, said Markel, an addition he said will be "huge boon."

As well, a paired exchange registry will be set up for kidney donors and recipients.

"It refers to the situation where I need a kidney transplant, I have a family member or a friend who's prepared to give me their kidney, but they can't do it because their blood types don't match," Markel explained.

"So our thought here is 'can I trade with somebody else?' Maybe you need a kidney too, you've got a family member who's prepared to give a kidney to you but your blood types don't match. But when we look at your donor and me, and my donor and you, the blood types do match, so you can do a swap or an exchange."

"For every province, it's better to be doing this nationally because we all share in a bigger pool, we'll all get more matches, it's an excellent program."

As well, CBS will work on a national initiative to get a consensus on sharing kidneys and other organs for "highly sensitized recipients" who can only tolerate a narrow range of blood types, Markel said.

Altogether, 4,195 Canadians were on wait-lists for organ transplants on Dec. 31. Last year, 193 Canadians died waiting for an organ transplant, according to statistics from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Health Canada's support for the creation of the organ-donor system will be $3.58 million per year for five years.

"National and provincial registries are critical tools for clinicians and patients. These investments mean we will be able to offer hope and save more lives," Alberta Minister of Health and Wellness Ron Liepert said in a statement Tuesday, on behalf of the provinces and territories.