Parents donate baby's organs

The kidneys of a six-day-old baby have been donated for transplanation in a British medical first that doctors say gives hope to hundreds of other infants and older children.

Each year about 1000 people die while on UK transplant waiting lists. There is a severe shortage of donors and it is difficult to find organs small enough for the younger infants.

In South Africa, there are about 4300 adults and children waiting for a life-saving organ or cornea transplant.

Experts at Imperial College Healthcare Trust, in the UK, say harvesting organs from neonates could save many lives in future - by enabling more transplants for younger children and by increasing the total pool of donors, as children's organs can be used in adults.

Gaurav Atreja, a consultant neonatologist, said the recent development was a milestone in caring for newborns and could give some comfort to the parents of babies who die within days or weeks of birth.

The donor was a baby girl born at term after an emergency Caesarean section at Hammersmith Hospital, London, last year. She weighed almost 3.2kg but was found to have been starved of oxygen during the pregnancy, which left her brain-damaged and unable to move or respond to stimuli.

The case - the first successful organ harvesting of a newborn in the UK - is reported in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The child's kidneys were transplanted into a patient with renal failure, and her liver cells were transfused into another recipient.

Doctors involved in the case said that the donation of the organs had helped to make the grieving family's journey easier because it had "the potential to transform another life".

The baby's kidneys, only 3.8cm long, were about a third the size of an adult's, doctors said, but such organs are normally fully functioning after only about 37 weeks of pregnancy.

Atreja said: "When we explained to the parents of the baby girl that it would be possible to save some lives with their help they were only too keen.

"They didn't need any persuading - not that that is something we would ever try to do. It's a decision that has to come from the parents without any pressure.

"It's a very sensitive and difficult issue," he said.

Professor James Neuberger, associate medical director for organ donation and transplantation at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "The sad reality is that, for everybody to get the life-saving transplant they are desperately in need of, more families who are facing the tragic loss of their young child will need to agree to donation."

In 2013, 20 children in South Africa received donated organs.