Over at his market design blog, Al Roth brings news that the World Health Organization’s Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly has adopted a global resolution on kidney disease, Reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases through promotion of kidney health and strengthening prevention and control of kidney disease, which:
" URGES Member States, in accordance with their national context and priorities, to:
…
"(6) take measures to promote progressive access to kidney replacement therapy, of which kidney transplantation is preferred, enabling timely referral for transplantation, as well as by implementing interventions to maximize the availability of organs for clinical use aligned with the WHO Guiding Principles on human cell, tissue and organ transplantation"
Roth concludes:
As I've noted elsewhere, the WHO has some counterproductive policies regarding transplantation (and blood and plasma donation, etc), but this particular resolution seems like a positive one.
One of those elsewheres is this paper, WHO Says Countries Should Be Self-Sufficient In (Unremunerated) Organs And Blood, which:
critiques the twin World Health Organization (WHO) principles of self-sufficiency and nonremuneration in organs and blood, urging a more sensible approach to the scarce resources of blood products and transplantable organs. WHO and other experts have failed to acknowledge the tension between self-sufficiency and nonremuneration in blood products–no country that fails to pay plasma donors is self-sufficient. Furthermore, international cooperation and cross-border transplantation provide numerous benefits, especially in smaller countries and those without well-developed domestic exchange programs. The combination of these twin principles denies to health care many of the benefits that trade has brought to so many other human endeavors and the effects are particularly damaging to low and middle income countries. Substances of human origin are special, but not so special that we prohibit plasma or organ donation. We should be open to exploring and experimenting with ways to bring to health care some of the benefits that trade has brought to so many other human endeavors, such as the production and distribution of food and lifesaving vaccines and other medicines.
Roth’s post is here. The WHO resolution is here. And our paper critiquing the WHO twin principles on self-sufficiency and nonremuneration is here.