Surgeon attacks foreign use of British organs

A LEADING transplant surgeon today hit out at two London hospitals for allowing foreigners to leap-frog NHS queues for liver transplants.

Professor Nadey Hakim, one of the UK's top kidney surgeons, believes British donors will be "horrified" to hear how 50 livers were given to non-British patients over the past two years.

King's College Hospital in Denmark Hill and the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead performed the majority of NHS operations on 40 Greeks and Cypriots.

Further private procedures were undertaken on patients from countries including China, Libya, Kuwait and Israel, seven of whom were classed as deserving equal access to services. NHS Blood and Transplant said giving British organs to foreigners was not unlawful. The Health department said non-EU patients must meet strict criteria. A record 8,000 UK patients are awaiting NHS transplants, with 325 needing a liver.

Professor Hakim, of the West London Transplant Unit, said: "We're desperate to get more organs and have got plenty of our own patients waiting, who are legitimate and deserve organs.

"The last thing we want to do is offer our organs to patients from other countries, let alone non-EU, and donors will be horrified to hear this is happening."

King's College Hospital in Denmark Hill admitted that 41 of its 395 liver transplants between January 2007 and last November were foreign nationals. King's said it was bound by EU law and European patients with no access to transplant programmes had the same rights to organs as Britons. Other UK hospitals such as Leeds do refuse them.