RELATIVES of kidney patients who cannot donate an organ to them because their tissue does not match are to be paired with the families of other patients under an “organ swap” programme that could lead to 50 more transplants a year.

Almost 600 people a year receive a kidney transplant from a living relative or friend, but dozens of others remain on the waiting list because, although they know people who are willing to donate an organ, none has the right tissue type.

The system announced yesterday by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) will provide hope to many of these patients by allowing such families to join donor pools that improve the chances of finding a suitable match. A husband who is unable to donate a kidney to his wife might be able to offer an organ to a stranger whose tissue matches his own, on the understanding that his wife will receive a kidney from a relative or friend of the fortunate patient.

Three or more families will be allowed to pool donated kidneys from living donors, so that all the patients in the group can find a match. The system, which operates successfully in the US, the Netherlands and South Korea, will start on September 1 and is expected to yield up to 50 extra transplants annually.

For the first time it will also allow people to donate organs to unknown patients on a purely altruistic basis, subject to a rigorous assessment of the donor’s psychiatric and physical health. Altruistic donors will not be allowed to stipulate conditions, such as the race or religion of a recipient, and payment will still be banned. The HTA does not expect such altruistic donors to come forward often. Only a handful of such cases are known worldwide, most of which have involved members of religious sects.

Although the new regulations are designed to facilitate kidney transplants, they could be applied to other organs that can be donated by live donors, particularly sections of the liver. This procedure, however, is riskier to the donor, and doctors expect it to be performed far less frequently.

Both altruistic and paired organ donation have never been technically illegal in Britain, but neither was sanctioned by the predecessor of the HTA, the Unrelated Live Transplant Regulatory Authority. The Human Tissue Act 2004 made it explicit that such transplants were permissible, leading to the new HTA framework.

There are 5,804 people in Britain waiting for a kidney transplant but, at present, fewer than 2,000 organs become available for the procedure each year, including those from living donors.

KIDNEYS FOR TRANSPLANT

More than 13 million people — 22 per cent of the population — have said that they want to help others to live after their death by joining the NHS Organ Donor Register

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