Hospital.Help

Berlin – North Rhine-Westphalia’s Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU) has expressed confidence that the renewed initiative to increase organ donations in Germany will be successful this time. He has great hope that the so-called opt-out solution will be implemented this time, Laumann said today in the ZDF-Morning magazine.

More members of parliament, particularly from the Greens, are now in favor of this. The opt-out solution, which is now back on the table thanks to a federal state initiative, stipulates that in principle every person is considered an organ donor if he or she has not expressed an objection during his or her lifetime.

Laumann dismissed criticism of this as incomprehensible with regard to the consideration of how important transplant medicine is. The model proposed in the Federal Council provides for people to be written to several times, and a “huge information campaign” is involved. “It is not the state overreaching itself when we say you have to decide.”

The CDU politician pointed out that although surveys show that around 80 percent of those surveyed are in favor of organ donation, only around 40 percent have an organ donor card. There is a “catastrophic situation on the waiting lists” and people are dying before they can get a new organ, Laumann stressed.

In mid-June, a draft law from eight federal states to introduce the opt-out solution was presented to the Bundesrat. This will now be discussed in the Health Committee of the Chamber of States and will then be put back on the Bundesrat’s agenda – to decide whether it wants to adopt the draft and submit it to the Bundestag.

The latter had already voted on an opt-out solution in 2020, but there was no majority for it at the time. The model for the so-called decision solution was then adopted: This means that every person should document on their own initiative whether they want to donate organs or not.

In addition to the initiative of the federal states, a cross-party group of members of the Bundestag also wants to present an initiative for the introduction of an objection regulation today. © afp/aerzteblatt.de