Aug 20, 2004

The government is likely to offer financial assistance to live kidney donors in a bid to try to boost the number of people donating organs.

Health Minister Annette King says people are being put off giving organs due to a loss of income from taking time off work to have an operation.

King won't say at this stage how much money will be offered.

She says she will take a paper to Cabinet later this year that will propose money for loss of earnings be made available to live donors through the welfare system.

Donating a kidney is a relatively safe procedure, as was recently highlighted by former All Black Jonah Lomu receiving a kidney from friend Grant Kereama.

The publicity of Lomu's transplant may have helped boost donor numbers a little.

But the deputy director of the Auckland Renal Transplant Group, Ian Dittmer, says only around 10% of people who approach them about donating actually end up doing so.

He says it is possible many are put off when they learn they will need at least a month off work to recuperate from their operation.

Taranaki woman Sarah Poynton, who recently received a kidney from her husband, says receiving some financial assistance would have been a great help to her family.

She says her partner needed eight weeks off work to recover and it was a real struggle.

Whether having more people donate their kidneys will reduce costs in other areas of the health system is an issue likely to be looked at as part of the Ministry of Health's wider review in to human tissue and donor issues launched this year.

But King doubts this proposal would be a big cost to the taxpayer.

It is thought around 400 people are actively waiting for kidney transplants in New Zealand at any one time, with around 110 transplants carried out each year on average.

However, in the last year only 42 of the kidneys transplanted came from live donors, compared with 72 from the deceased.

Andy Tookey from Give Life New Zealand has been lobbying to improve New Zealand's poor donor rate, including issues of driver licensing.

He says getting more live donors will be a real help.

Tookey says ideally he would like all the expenses of each kidney donor to be paid for by the government on merit.

He says some transplant doctors believe the government should go a step further and pay all donors a lump sum of $10,000.