Farewelling body parts 'would help Maori donors'

Holding ceremonies to farewell body parts has been suggested to address lagging Maori organ donation rates.

Otago University masters student Jennifer Ngahooro, whose study focuses on Maori organ donation, has proposed measures to increase Maori donation rates.

Maori make up 14.1 per cent of the New Zealand population, yet in 2007 represented 32 per cent of those needing kidney transplants. In the same year, no Maori donated organs after death, though there have been up to seven donors in other years.

In the five years to 2008, between 17 and 37 European New Zealanders were donors each year.

Many Maori believe the body has to remain whole and should be returned on death to ancestral land for burial.

Mrs Ngahooro suggested a ceremony modelled on powhiri for transplants, so that before the operation, grieving families could gather in a hospital chapel to farewell body parts. A separate ceremony would be held for recipients of organs and their families.

"It's a Maori model, but I think it's a model that would be really good for everyone."

Mrs Ngahooro said a two-stage process – a hospital ceremony followed by full funeral – would be acceptable to modern Maori, many of whom no longer had their bodies returned to ancestral land.

She said donors tended to come from hospital intensive care units, where doctors should make it clearer to grieving families whether people had signalled they wanted to donate organs, taking the burden of choice off families.

There needed to be more education about what transplants involved and donor anonymity had to be re-examined, she said.

Auckland City Hospital transplant physician Ian Dittmer said he largely supported Mrs Ngahooro's proposals.

He proposed that specialised staff, rather than hospital doctors, should approach families to broach the matter of organ donation.

New Zealand had between 500 and 600 people on the waiting list for kidneys, the most-commonly transplanted organ.

The Dominion Post reported yesterday on New Zealanders going to China and India for black-market operations, including some for organs believed to come from executed prisoners in China.

Dr Dittmer said that a few years ago his department got a call from an airline which was returning a patient from India who had a kidney transplant and was seriously ill.

Wellington renal physician Alastair MacDonald said overseas transplants happened from "time to time".

- © Fairfax NZ News