Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to Taking organ transplantation to 2020: a detailed strategy, published in 2013, what plans he has to increase consent rates for deceased organ donation to 80 per cent by 2020.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is the organ donor organisation for the United Kingdom and is responsible for promoting organ donation and the matching and allocating of donated organs.

The UK Taking Organ Transplantation to 2020 Strategy (2013) aims to achieve world class consent rates of over 80% by 2020. One of the actions to achieve this was the development of national strategies to promote a shift in behaviour to increase consent. The consent rate was 57% in 2013 and is currently 62% year to date. More data can be found at:

http://www.odt.nhs.uk/pdf/ODT_SMT_Monthly_Performance_Report_201612.pdf

NHSBT has adopted a model to share and scale up successful local activity and to allow broad national messages to be adapted to meet specific local audiences and needs. Examples include NHSBT’s ‘hot house’ pilots which aims to target specific areas which cover a large population, high potential donor numbers and lower than average opt in rates on the Organ Donation Register with a fully-integrated programme of local activity.

In addition, NHSBT has invested significantly in more specialist nurses, in better retrieval arrangements and in strengthening referral procedures between intensive care and the transplant programme to help ensure that all potential donors are identified and that families are supported through this very difficult time.