Dutch man's ad for kidney puts focus on organ shortage (News Feature)

By Rachel Levy Jul 2, 2009, 8:31 GMT

Amsterdam - After five years of waiting in vain for a donor, Dutch kidney patient Adrie de Graaf took drastic action to call attention to his plight: He began placing newspaper ads.

'Wanted: Samaritan kidney donor, O-positive,' the ads read. Then de Graaf, 63, waited again.

This time, his appeal not only helped him to find a potential donor, but it also drew attention to the wider policy issue in the Netherlands about the rising incidence of 'live' organ donors.

Through the ads and then thanks to an appearance by de Graaf on television, his appeal found the heart of a 37-year-old woman, who was moved.

'When I watched him on television I just thought I had to do something,' said Maggy van Manen of the northern town of Drachten.

Now the two are undergoing a series of blood and other medical tests to determine whether van Manen's kidney and de Graaf's body organism are compatible enough for a transplant. De Graaf is hopeful: 'I might be getting a new kidney by the end of this year.'

De Graaf's public appeal for a kidney has drawn the focus again on the issue of the shortage of donated organs in the country, and on whether the country's laws concerning the donation of 'live' organs need reforming.

Pauline Plieijter, spokeswoman of the national kidney foundation Nierstichting, told the German Press Agency dpa that the number of 'live donors' - people who donate their kidney while alive - has increased substantially.

'Today over half of the kidney transplantations in the Netherlands come from live donors,' she said, while also admitting that her own foundation had initially been sceptical toward the trend but has since changed its mind - at least partially.

At first her foundation was very 'hesitant' about the development, but then was persuaded by medical research showing that transplantation results from live donors were substantially better than those from a deceased donor.

'On average a kidney from a live donor lasts twice as long (as one from a dead donor),' she said.

And she concedes that on two major conditions, her foundation is less reluctant to accept live organ donation: '(That) it is absolutely voluntary and no financial transaction is involved.'

Meanwhile at the centre for medical ethics and public health (CEG) in The Hague, Alies Struijs said her organisation 'understands' de Graaf's unusual newspaper ad action and how it drew attention to the 'emergency' in the shortage of donors.

She said that in principle the CEG had no problem with ads seeking a living donor, although 'this development does signify the emergency of reducing the Dutch organ donor shortage.'

Struijs said the CEG recommended that the Dutch government change existing donor laws in an attempt to increase the number of available donors.

'Several political reasons have kept Health Minister Ab Klink so far from following either of our various proposals for a fundamental reform in the donor registration law,' she noted.

The present, the country's organ donor system is a so-called opt- in system. People who want to donate their organs after their deaths, have to enter themselves on the national donor registry.

Critics of this system often recommend a so-called opt-out system, where people would automatically be considered donors unless they actively seek to opt-out.

Prior to de Graaf's newspaper ads, the issue of the donor shortage in the Netherlands was dramatically revealed in a controversial television programme in June 2007. The 'Big Donor Show' made global headlines after it announced that a terminally ill woman would choose which of the show's three contestants - all kidney patients - would receive one of her kidneys.

The show turned out to be a hoax, meant to raise public awareness about the shortage of organ donors.

Around 12,000 people registered as organ donors in the weeks following the show, but organ donation law has remained unchanged.