The student's vital dialogue on organ donation and transplantation

A Wits University student society uses prompts to seek the meaning of Organ donation from the student's point of view. 

On April 16, 2024, the Wits Students’ Bioethical Society (WSBS) presented the organ donation dialogue at the Wits medical school, which allowed students to share and discuss their views regarding a conversation that affects public health and hospital life. 

In this discussion, 11 participants were presented with three prompt questions, each participant had the opportunity to choose between three options ranging from agreeing, neutral, to disagreeing, which ultimately revealed their stance about that prompt, and had to substantiate why they picked that specific option. 

Below is the results of the three prompt question:

Facilitating the conversation was the Netcare Transplant division procurement coordinator and regional manager, Lizette Cooke. After students had discussed each prompt, she allowed them to ask her questions and clarified some misconceptions.  

A common misconception amongst the participants which turned into a round of informative debate was ‘does your social status influence the preference for receiving an organ over someone with a lower social status?.’   

While all participants agreed on the idea of organ donation, people were divided across cultural and socioeconomic lines. 

Due to our country being a multi-culturally diverse society, how we grew up and the way we are natured affect our feelings about certain practices. 

Just after Sonia Modi, a Wits University medical student asked “what is wrong with prioritizing someone with a high social value?”, a second-year medical student raised his hand and said, “Personally, I do not believe that social status should be a determining factor for giving health care to others, health care should be determined as an arbitrary figure.” 

This type of personal view leaves us with questions like, does for instance a drug addict deserve to be donated with a heart?  

Abigail Davies, a medical student, and a Wits Students’ Public Health Society (WSPHS) secretary posed a follow-up question and asked, how does the system work in terms of organ donation division between the public and private sector? 

The decision on who receives the organ lies with the healthcare sector. Lizette Cooke added, “there is 50/50 division”. The reason for this implementation is that there are more coordinators in private than public, if more organs were to be donated to the public sector with the aim of balancing the socio-economic factor, the private healthcare sector will not receive anything. 

Again, during the third prompt, the mitigating factor came into play, Lizette Cooke raised that compensating the family of a donor for organ donation only solves their problems for now.”  Adding the concept of money creates a monopoly system, a system where the elite will dictate the market and can possibly increase the rates of human trafficking in poorer societies.  

In terms of who gets preferred when there is donor, a crossmatch system is implemented, and the healthcare system works with coordinators. As much as the participants disagreed with this stance, but the patients get on the list due to social benefits.  

The conversation about organ donation is overly broad, and it is a discussion that should be held in any type of family setting, even most religions permit and deems it significant, people never acknowledge its importance until it is them or their loved ones in the situation.