In spite of this, there are still thousands waiting for kidney donations in order to treat their life-threatening diseases.

Monday's China Youth Daily reported that because of the big shortfall of kidney donations, most patients have to wait for six months to a year for kidney donations, during which time they spend a large amount on medical fees.

Less than one percent of kidney recipients are lucky enough to have kidney donated by their relatives. Most are transplanted with kidneys from people who have died, the newspaper said.

In developed countries however, 30 to 40 percent of the patients recieve kidneys donated by their relatives, which are found to work better than donations from other sources, a fact which Tang Xiaoda, chairman of the China Dialysis and Transplant Seminar verifies.

Clinical experiments show that the averagelife span of patients transplanted with kidney from their relatives is 19.5 years, which is seven years longer than those transplanted with other kidneys. The longest life span recorded so far is 40 years with a kidney transplant from a relative.

Chinese doctors are pushing for legislative protection for kidney donations between relatives in an effort to convince more people to donate their kidneys.

The newspaper quoted Tang as saying most of the patients who need kidney transplants are aged between 15 and 55, and numbers keep increasing. For example, the number of uremic patients increases by 120,000 every year.

(China Daily June 26, 2002)