萬國法律事務所

In November 2012, when reviewing the 2012 annual budget for the Department of Health (DOH), Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed a resolution mandating the DOH to order all major hospitals and doctors to require patients who have received organ transplants in a foreign country to register within three months.

The registration must indicate the country and place of the transplant, hospital, doctor, and other related information. Because the resolution is tied to the DOH budget, once the budget is passed, patients who have received organ transplants in foreign countries must first register all of the required information before the National Health Insurance will pay for the anti-rejection drugs.

The registration requirement reflects the 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices by the U.S. Department of State. In that report, it was found that in China, human organs were taken from living persons. There have been many media reports that organs are harvested in China from political dissidents, such as Falun Gong members, or from ethnic minorities, such as Uyghurs.

Taiwan’s DOH stated that there are regulations in place that require hospitals to register the information after an organ transplant has been completed. The information includes the matching of anti-rejection drugs used. Over the last few years, some Taiwan citizens have gone to China to get organ transplants. Human rights groups support the new resolution and are hopeful that the new requirements will further discourage individuals from going to China for organ transplants.