Berlin: (hib/PK) According to the federal government, tissue transplants are indispensable for the care of patients. Adequate transplantation medical care is only possible thanks to tissue donations, according to the federal government’s answer (20/9888) to a small question (20/9513) from the Union parliamentary group.
Therefore, even after the planned start of operation of the register for declarations on organ and tissue donation (OGR) in the first quarter of 2024, every possible tissue donation should be possible, provided there is a willingness to donate. To this end, the wishes of the deceased must be able to be determined easily and clearly in the future.
With the start of operations of the OGR, citizens could enter their declaration of organ and tissue donation in the register. The Transplantation Act (TPG) stipulates that before any possible donation, the willingness of potential donors to donate must be clarified by retrieving information from the OGR.
In ongoing technical discussions, the question is also being discussed as to whether and how willingness to donate tissue can be clarified after the OGR has started operating if, as in around 90 percent of cases, a possible tissue donor is not also considered as an organ donor.
In principle, access to the OGR is possible from all wards of a hospital by those people who have been designated as authorized to access it. In principle, a hospital can name any number of doctors and transplant representatives as authorized to call, the answer continues.
There are also no legal reasons against naming external doctors employed by tissue facilities as authorized to call. If hospitals made use of this in coordination with the tissue facilities, it would be guaranteed that declarations from people who died outside of a hospital could also be accessed.