Government considers income support for organ donors

9.00am

The Government is looking at providing income support to people who donate organs after suggestions financial costs were putting people off becoming donors.

Health Minister Annette King said today the Government was not looking at lump sum compensation but at welfare assistance to provide income support while the donor was recuperating the about four to eight weeks necessary after the operation.

Since 1993, the donor rate has fluctuated between 34 and 46 donors a year. As many as 350 people are on the waiting list for organ transplants, mostly kidneys.

Ms King said she would be taking a joint paper with Social Services Minister Steve Maharey to cabinet in the next few weeks looking at the issue of income support for donors.

She told National Radio the details still had to be worked through but the idea had come from the Government's response to the petition of Andy Tookey and 1169 others calling for something to be done about low organ donation rates.

A parliamentary committee which considered the petition last November recommended a national organ donor register.

The Government responded that it approved setting up a national agency to co-ordinate organ donations -- but it rejected calls for a new national donor register to replace the indications given on drivers' licences.

Ms King said the Government was aware of issues of broader welfare assistance for live donors and had promised to undertake work on that.

It was not looking at lump sum compensation, she said.

"We were talking about income support while a live donor is unwell following the procedure," she said.

It was a barrier to organ donation if a person had to take time off work to donate a kidney.

"What we're looking at is income support while they're off work."

Donors could be off work for between four and eight weeks while they recuperated.

"... not many of us have money put aside that we could live for that long without having an income so that's the area we are looking at."

It was too early to say exactly how the Government would fund this "but we are looking at the welfare system as they way that we would be able to provide income support".

"We already have two benefits that we could use -- an emergency benefit or a special benefit, they both have a high degree of flexibility -- but the details of it will be worked through."

"We're talking about a specific help for people who are going to lose income as they donate an organ and I think it's going to be an important part of the response we have to trying to increase our organ donation," Ms King said.

A spokeswoman for the Kidney Foundation said financial assistance to donors would help, particularly in the case of couples or family members when both donor and recipient were off work.

The foundation had received about double the amount of calls from people interested in donating an organ since the news broke that radio personality Grant Kereama had donated a kidney to Jonah Lomu.

- NZPA