It's a sport event with no special items; but it's one of special meaning.

The Chinese Transplant Games, the first such event in China started on Saturday in Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei Province. It is hoped the games will show progress in China's organ donation and transplant procedures.

"I want to show other organ recipients as well as the public that I am living very well after the transplant," said Zhao Fang, a table tennis "athlete" from east China's Shandong Province who had a kidney transplant in 1991.

All the 194 athletes participating look well and will take part in the games' 15 sections. Up until now the longest survival period has been 28 years.

"It's more than a sports game; we aim to raise the public awareness of organ donation and transplants, express thanks to donors and encourage recipients and organ-failure patients to live their life to the full. More importantly, it may accelerate the nation's legislation progress in organ donation such as brain death and organ transplantation," said Professor Chen Zhonghua, vice-president of the Chinese Society of Organ Transplantation.

The society organized the event to be held annually with financial support from the "China Organ Donation and Transplantation Cooperation Program" between the Ministry of Health and Man And Environment Novartis Foundation.

With its skillful surgeons, China ranks second in terms of performing organ transplants with more than 5,000 cases annually, but it still has a long way to go to make the public more aware and also legal stipulations.

Medical experts estimate about half a million Chinese patients are waiting for kidney transplants while the chance of getting a matched healthy kidney is less than 1 percent.

"The shortage of healthy organs is a global problem, and closely related living donors have become a popular and most effective way in Western countries for these operations to be carried out. In these cases, the recipients' 15-year-survival rate is more than 80 percent," said Maurice Slapak, chairman of the World Transplant Games Federation.

In the United States, among organ donation cases in 2001, over 52 percent were donated by recipients' close relatives. However, 2002 only witnessed 76 cases of close relatives' living donations in China, accounting for less than 2 percent of total donation cases. "We shall make great efforts to encourage people to donate for their family members, but the problem is the donor's medical cost is not covered by the medical insurance," said Chen.

To help donors, Beijing Novartis Pharma Ltd has promised to donate 1 million yuan (US$121,000) in three years to provide each donor to a family member with 5,000 yuan (US$604) for medical costs.

Presently, only two regional regulations have been mapped out in China concerning organ donation. They are "The Regulation of Dead Body Donation" applied in the east China's Shanghai and "The Regulation of Organ Donation" issued in Shenzhen of south China's Guangdong Province in 2003.

(China Daily June 26, 2004)