New Zealand
New Zealand law allows live donors to participate in altruistic organ donation only. In the five years to 2018, there were 16 cases of liver donation by live donors and 381 cases of kidney donation by live donors. New Zealand has low rates of live donation, which could be due to the fact that it is illegal to pay someone for their organs. The Human Tissue Act 2008 states that trading in human tissue is prohibited, and is punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 or a prison term of up to 1 year. The Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016, which came into force in December 2017, allows live organ donors to be compensated for lost income for up to 12 weeks post-donation.New Zealand law also allows for organ donation from deceased individuals. In the five years to 2018, organs were taken from 295 deceased individuals. Everyone who applies for a drivers licence in New Zealand indicates whether or not they wish to be a donor if they die in circumstances that would allow for donation. The question is required to be answered for the application to be processed, meaning that the individual must answer yes or no, and does not have the option of leaving it unanswered.
Organ donation is the process when a person allows an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive or dead with the assent of the next of kin. Donation may be for research or, more commonly, healthy transplantable organs and tissues may be donated to be transplanted into another person.Common transplantations include kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, intestines, lungs, bones, bone marrow, skin, and corneas. Some organs and tissues can be donated by living donors, such as a kidney or part of the liver, part of the pancreas, part of the lungs or part of the intestines, but most donations occur after the donor has died.In 2019, Spain had the highest donor rate in the world at 46.91 per million people, followed by the US (36.88 per million), Croatia (34.63 per million), Portugal (33.8 per million), and France (33.25 per million).As of February 2, 2019, there were 120,000 people waiting for life-saving organ transplants in the US. Of these, 74,897 people were active candidates waiting for a donor. While views of organ donation are positive, there is a large gap between the numbers of registered donors compared to those awaiting organ donations on a global level.To increase the number of organ donors, especially among underrepresented populations, current approaches include the use of optimized social network interventions, exposing tailored educational content about organ donation to target social media users.