Seven patients have died waiting for new livers since the start of 2003, a report shows.

The deaths have led to renewed calls for Government action to lift New Zealand's organ donor rate, which is one of the lowest in the developed world.

The annual report of the Auckland-based National Liver Transplant Unit shows that the unit successfully performed life-saving liver transplants on 37 patients in 2003.

However, a shortage of livers resulted in four patients dying on the waiting list and another three were taken off the list because they became so sick they could no longer be operated on.

Liver Transplant Unit director Professor Stephen Munn said all three of those patients had since died.

"If there were people who were on the list and who did not get transplanted before they either died or deteriorated that's because a liver did not come up in a timely fashion," he told NZPA.

"If we had an endless supply of livers...those seven patients would have been transplanted."

Prof Munn said New Zealand's organ donation rate of about 10 donors per million people per year had not changed for about a decade, despite the Health Ministry being aware of the problem for several years.

Organ donor advocate Andy Tookey, whose two-year-old daughter Katie suffers from a rare liver condition, biliary atresia, which means she will need a liver transplant in the future, said more action was urgently needed to improve donation rates.

At present low organ donation rates meant an extremely small band of patients could qualify for the transplant waiting list.

"At the moment you've got to be sick enough to get on it [the list], but well enough to survive the operation," he told NZPA.

Mr Tookey said he believed that the current system where family members could veto the wishes of a person to donate their organs after death needed to be changed. This would free up far more organs, he said.

National Transplant Donor Coordination Office spokeswoman Janice Langlands said there were nine people currently waiting for liver transplants. Another 370 people were waiting for other organ transplants, mostly kidneys.

She said the Health Ministry had promised extra funding for the donor office for the next financial year, but the office was still unclear when exactly the funding would come.

It had first put in a proposal for extra funding in 1998, she said.

But Health Ministry deputy director-general sector policy, Gillian Durham, said the ministry would definitely provide the extra funding for the office to expand the education of health professionals and co-ordinate organ donation in the next financial year.

Most organs came from brain-dead patients who were on life support in ICUs before they died. ICU staff were responsible for requesting family members' approval for organ donation.

A previous audit showed staff were failing to approach the family members of many suitable patients.

Ms Durham said the ministry hoped the new funding would mean all health professionals involved in organ donation received education within the next three years.

The Donor Coordination office would be renamed Organ Donation New Zealand.

Law changes, such as those mooted by Mr Tookey, aimed at boosting organ donor rates would be considered during the Government's review of the Human Tissue Act, she said.

The Government was currently consulting on possible changes to the Act, she said.

Ms Langlands said the Donor Coordination office would use some of the money to employ a medical specialist and to improve links with staff in the country's ICUs.

NZPA