Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-161"
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"en.20080421.18.1-161"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, organ transplants do indeed save human lives in Europe every day. Sadly, a shortage of donors means that thousands of Europeans die every year whilst still on the waiting list. The challenge is how to increase donor numbers safely. As shadow rapporteur for the Group of the European People’s Party and European Democrats I am very happy today to see Parliament wholeheartedly endorsing the Commission's initiative and acknowledging that Europe can play an essential role here.
Organ donation and transplantation is a highly complex and emotive subject, as other speakers have said, and views on it vary widely in the Member States. Whilst working on the report I myself talked to quite a few doctors, patients and organisations. The hearing we held and the study visit to Spain also provided us with interesting insights, and I must thank the rapporteur very sincerely today for having incorporated all our contributions into his report.
Four points. One, we must above all take care to ensure that the directive on quality and safety, put forward by the Commission, is sufficiently flexible and does not create additional administrative burdens or even a decrease in the number of organs available. In our view it must be the doctor who ultimately decides on quality and safety. To guarantee quality and safety we also ask that Member States monitor and evaluate post-transplantation and post-donation results. Since data comparability between Member States is very important here, we might perhaps think about having a common methodology for analysing the data.
Two, we think the most essential factor in recruiting more donors, even more important than legislation, is the way in which the donation system is organised. We would thus like to see hospitals deploying more staff to identify potential donors, but also to counsel and assist the next of kin. In countries that use transplant coordinators of this kind, the number of donors rises.
Three, this also demonstrates how crucially important it is to exchange good practice among Member States. The European Union can easily foster this. It is also important that hospitals publicise the positive results of transplantation and be proactive in their dealings with the media.
Four, we think it is very important to consider living donors as well as post-mortem donors. And we would like to see living donors not being discriminated again, by insurance companies for example.
Lastly, organ donation must remain a strictly non-commercial, altruistic and voluntary process. Any payments made must in our view be only for the expense and inconvenience of donating. The Commission, together with Member States, must be far more proactive in countering the sale and trafficking of organs and transplant tourism. Traceability is very important here and Europol too must monitor things better and identify cases of organ selling and/or trafficking.
I am certain that Parliament, through this report, is sending out a very balanced and firm signal, and I urge the House to vote in favour of the report tomorrow."@en1
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