The committee wants Guernsey to move away from the current system of organ donation where individuals, or their families on their behalf, need to actively consent to a scheme based on ‘deemed consent’.
It will take a policy letter to the States following consultation earlier this year.
Under the proposed scheme to be established through legislation, and subject to safeguards and exemptions, people would be deemed to consent to donating their organs unless they actively opt out.
HSC president Heidi Soulsby said the gift of an organ was very precious and it was hoped the scheme would raise awareness.
‘Less than 1% of people die in circumstances where they are able to donate their organs,’ she said.
‘This is one reason why there is a waiting list for those needing a transplant.
‘There are currently over 6,000 people waiting for an organ across the British Isles, many of whom will die waiting.
‘The recommendations in the Policy Letter reflect the results of the consultation exercise, where the majority supported the proposals for a ‘‘soft’’ opt-out scheme, will raise the profile of organ donation and will hopefully increase the likelihood of donation when the situation arises.’
The ‘soft’ opt-out scheme means that those who have neither opted in or out would be considered to have given ‘deemed consent’, however, in those cases their family would be consulted prior to donation.
A hard opt-out would be where family views are not taken into account and organs might be removed from any individual who has not registered to opt out.
‘This means that the scheme further accommodates individuals who may object to organ donation due to religious or moral reasons,’ Health said in its letter.
‘Donation would not proceed where the family indicate their loved one did not want to be a donor or where proceeding is likely to cause the family severe distress or lead to conflict.
‘The intention would be that under the new arrangements there would be increased encouragement for families to discuss their wishes.’
Health said it knew that there were currently many people who, although they did believe in organ donation, had not joined the Organ Donor Register.
Without making an express decision, it was more difficult for doctors to establish a patient’s wishes and more difficult for friends and family to honour them.
While moving to a ‘soft’ opt-out or deemed consent model for organ donation was unlikely to lead to a marked increase in donations given the size of Guernsey’s population, and the limited circumstances when donation was potentially possible, by symbolically moving the default position, it said the proposals would reinforce the positive view of organ donation and could increase the likelihood of organ donation when the situation arose.
Wales was the first jurisdiction in the British Isles to introduce deemed consent, with the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act coming into force in December 2015.
Earlier this year, Jersey approved its Human Transplantation and Anatomy (Jersey) Law 2018 by 44 votes to 1, which will introduce a soft opt-out scheme and the Isle of Man launched a consultation in March of this year on an ‘opt-out’ system.
You need to be logged in to comment. If you had an account on our previous site, you can migrate your old account and comment profile to this site by visiting this page and entering the email address for your old account. We'll then send you an email with a link to follow to complete the process.