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Organ donation in Germany hindered by transplant scandal
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- Created on Monday, 19 August 2013 00:00
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Organ donation in Germany hindered by transplant scandal
The Göttingen doctor accused of falsifying medical files for the purpose of speedy organ transplants faces court on Monday. The nationwide scandal has had negative effects on organ donation in Germany.
In late July 2012, public prosecutors launched an investigation against a doctor who headed the transplant department at the university hospital in the northern German city of Göttingen. He was accused of having changed the data on patients' files in at least 25 cases, helping them receive transplants more quickly than would have otherwise been the case. This meant that false information had been communicated to Eurotransplant, which is responsible for deciding which patients receive available donated organs.
{sidebar id=12 align=right}Through his actions, the doctor may well have caused the death of other patients on the transplant waiting list. He was charged with 11 cases of attempted manslaughter and three cases of grievous bodily harm. No evidence of bribery was found.
Not just in Göttingen
The scandal led to further revelations. In the following months, additional suspect cases were uncovered at the hospital. Next in line for investigation was a specialist who had studied medicine at the University of Bologna. Particularly suspicious was the fact that out of the 99 patients that received a liver transplant in Göttingen between 1995 and 1999, 23 were Italian, with several of them coming from Bologna.
The clues also led the authorities to the university hospital in Regensburg in southern Germany, where the accused was employed between 2003 and 2008. There, according to an investigation by the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" newspaper, the rate of liver transplants rose by an unusually large amount in that time. It was suspected that Jordanian patients had been illegally placed on European organ transplant waiting lists. According to the "Mittelbayerische Zeitung" newspaper, this happened at the time when the hospital - as part of a cooperation project under the patronage of the Bavarian government - was in the process of creating infrastructure for liver transplants in Amman. An investigation into the case is currently underway.
Alarmed by the scandal, the German Medical Association and the health ministry launched an investigation of Germany's 24 transplant hospitals. They found evidence of malpractice at the Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich: falsified laboratory results and cases of patients with advanced cancer, who would ordinarily not qualify for transplants, receiving donated organs. Bavarian Broadcasting cited hospital employees who claimed to have witnessed alcoholics also being placed on the transplant waiting list, against regulations.
In late June 2013, the Leipzig public prosecutor's office began investigating three doctors at the local university hospital. Here, too, allegations of manipulated patient data arose.
Organ donations take a plunge
The victims of this scandal are not only the patients who slipped further down the transplant waiting list as a direct result, but all of the 12,000 organ transplant hopefuls in Germany. The incident discouraged many people from becoming organ donors, even though the number of donors in the country was already low to begin with.
In the first six months of 2013, there were 18.3 percent fewer organ donations in Germany compared to the same period last year, despite the issue receiving a lot of publicity from the government, health insurance companies and the media. The number of transplant operations during this time fell by 12.3 percent to 1686.
Under German law, organs may only be removed for donation from the bodies of people who agreed to it while still alive. Their donor status is indicated by a credit-card-sized organ donor ID. If the deceased has not filled out an ID card, next of kin are required to decide what the deceased would have preferred.
The scandal also triggered a debate about possible reforms in the German organ transplant system. As a result, the German parliament tightened the laws, especially those pertaining to state monitoring of hospitals and penalties for data manipulation. Politicians from all factions agreed that the practice of rewarding doctors for carrying out numerous transplants needed to be stopped.
The ministry of health is currently looking into setting up a nationwide transplant database with non-falsifiable patient records. The assessment is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The database could be introduced in 2015 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, the trial against the Göttingen clinic's former transplant department head is due to begin on August 19.
Date 19.08.2013
Author Fabian Schmidt / ew
Editor Adrian Duke
Source:Deutsche Welle
No commentsMadam Theodosia Okoh - Joan Of Arc Of Ghana Hockey
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- Created on Friday, 26 July 2013 00:00
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Madam Theodosia Okoh - Joan Of Arc Of Ghana Hockey
Madam Theodosia Okoh (née Asihene), wife of the late Mr Enoch Okoh, Secretary to Kwame Nkrumah’s Cabinet in the 1960s, elder sister of Dr Leticia Obeng and the late Professor E.V Asihene, former Dean of the College of Art, KNUST, is unsurpassed in the annals of the development of Ghana Hockey.
Hope for victims of nodding disease in Uganda
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- Created on Monday, 25 March 2013 00:00
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Hope for victims of nodding disease in Uganda
I will no more speak on radio and TV on national issues – Prof. Akosa
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- Created on Friday, 26 July 2013 00:00
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I will no more speak on radio and TV on national issues – Prof. Akosa
{sidebar id=12 align=right}Outspoken Pathologists and politician, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa has taken a decision not to speak on national issues in the media again, following the vilification he suffered on Adom TV’s Pampaso, on Thursday.
Prof. Akosa demanded that Ghanaians needed to be told circumstance that led to the death of the late President John Evans Ata Mills.
According to the former Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, although the cause of the late president’s death has been established by the coroner’s autopsy to be natural, there were still many questions to be answered about the circumstances that led to his death.
Some callers into the show agreed with him, but others insisted that he was doing politics with the late president’s death and that, it was the will of God for the late president to have died so “we should leave it at that.”
Prof. Akosa expressed utter surprise at Ghanaians, saying: “I am sad that we have just reduced every death in this country to the will of God – if that were the case then there is no need for medical practice because, if it is the will of God for someone to die, no amount of medical attention can save the person.
“We should then all forget about seeing the doctor when we are sick and wait for the will of God to happen because if it is God’s will for us to survive a medical condition or die from it, there is nothing a doctor can do about it,” he added.
After the show, while chatting with the host, Kofi Adoma and the producers of the show, he stated “please do not invite me to or call me on any TV or Radio show to speak on national issues again because today, I have realized that it is not worth sharing my knowledge and experience with people who would rather attribute every death to the will of God instead of demanding answers that can lead to better service next time.”
Prior to stating that decision, Prof. Akosa had said that he was aware the Coroner’s Autopsy on late President Mills’ body stated the cause of his death as natural, adding that to the extent that no one had challenged the report, “we should leave it at that”.
He however insisted that there were genuine questions to be answered about the circumstances that led to the late president’s death, saying questions about the medical presence at the Presidency, whether an ambulance was called, who called the ambulance, at what time did the ambulance arrive, if any; was the ambulance well equipped, what exactly went on in the ambulance, could the hospital communicate with the ambulance, how prepared was the hospital when the president was taken there and other such questions.
The outspoken Professor said those questions are necessary to guide the country to make better preparations against such unforeseen incidents.
“There is 24/7 medical presence at the White House in America and Number 10 Downing Street in the UK, but I cannot not tell whether we have the same situation in our Presidency – these are questions we must ask so we can be guided to do better,” he said.
Prof. Akosa, who was once the Director-General of Ghana Health Service said during his tenure, the country had no ambulances but “vans marked with a red cross with a stretcher at the back and driven by an ordinary utility driver.”
“Those were no ambulances because an ambulance should have a driver and assistant who have expertise in monitoring cardiac function and providing basic life support until the ambulance reaches the hospital – a proper ambulance should also have oxygen, and other life support systems,” he said.
He said elsewhere, if an ambulance took more than 20minutes to arrive at an incident spot it was a big issue, adding that if a patient arrived at a hospital alive and breathing and died at the hospital, somebody must provide answers about the circumstances that led to the death, and that is different from the autopsy report.
Prof. Akosa recalled that ambulance services in this country took off after the May 9 stadium disaster in the year 2001, adding that as D-G he never got to see what equipment were in the ambulances brought into the country at the time so he could not tell whether the ambulance made available to the Presidency was well equipped.
He believes the country is joking with the lives of citizens by not establishing a proper ambulance service that can stop preventable deaths, saying that, but for lack of a proper and efficient ambulance services, lots of deaths could have been prevented in Ghana.
From: Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona|Adom News
Volta region’s Emefa crowned 2012 Ghana’s Most Beautiful
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- Created on Monday, 12 November 2012 00:00
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12 November 2012
Volta region’s Emefa crowned 2012 Ghana’s Most Beautiful
Volta regional representative, Emefa Akosua Apeti was on Sunday night crowned winner of the sixth season of the Ghana’s Most Beautiful reality show.
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