Living Organ Transplantation Policy Transition in Asia: Towards Adaptive Policy Changes

Alex He Jingwei, Allen Lai Yu-Hung, and Leong Ching

Advances in medical science have opened up a new supply channel of organs for sick patients. But health policies to match supply to demand, in particular the use of financial incentives for organ procurement, have been stymied largely at the formulation stage. This paper maps these policies in ten Asian economies along two defining variables: donor restriction and donor compensation. It finds substantial adaptive changes over the past two decades – half of these cases show a substantive change in either expanding donor eligibility, legalizing compensation, or both. The resulting analysis illuminates the need for a regulated liberalization of related policies and the establishment of regional governance perspectives.