![Typically dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, Gao has been working for the RCSC for over a decade, full-time yet voluntarily. [Photo/szqgjx.org]](U330P886T1D3519F12DT20111103131206.jpg "Typically dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, Gao has been working for the RCSC for over a decade, full-time yet voluntarily. [Photo/szqgjx.org]")
Gao recalled with emotion some of the donation cases she was involved in during an interview with the China Daily.
She told the reporter that she could not hold her tears back when seeing how family members of a brain dead patient made "an extremely difficult decision" to agree to donate his cornea in 2008.
The patient's wife gave birth to a baby girl the next morning. Doctors carried her to her father's bed to bid him farewell. "I was overwhelmed by emotion, just watching the beginning and the end of lives at the same time," Gao said.
However, not all the cases could produce such touching moments. Gao has often been given a cold-shoulder due to the complicated donation procedure and China's old funeral tradition.
According to the China Daily, only qualified hospitals in China are allowed to conduct transplants, but they are prohibited from removing tissues or organs of a dead body unless the donor's close relatives have signed an agreement with the RCSC.
As a result, Gao sometimes has to persuade the family members of a dead patient to agree on the donation and help hospitals conduct a timely transplant.
"When relatives, like a brother or sister, of a brain dead patient or a person whose disease is incurable, call me, I rush to the hospital to consult the doctor in charge first. Then I make sure that the patient's parents, children, and spouse, if there's any, agree on such a donation," Gao told the China Daily.
Data of the RCSC showed that by June 2009, 68,800 people in the Chinese mainland had registered to donate their tissues and organs, but only 8,400 eventually made the donation.
There were always parents who refused to sign the donation agreement, and children who said they would never allow removal of their parents' body parts, pointed out the China Daily.
In 2010, 27-year-old Li Hong died suddenly in a fall. Though his elder sister wanted to donate his body and organs, his 70-year-old mother firmly opposed such a move and cried her eyes out beside Li's body.
Though Gao finally got the approval, the transplant was never conducted due to organ failure.
"It's hard to change the thousand-year-old funeral tradition, where people deem cutting a dead body as utter impiety," Gao explained. "Hopefully with medical and living standard development, and promotional work, more people will accept tissue and organ donation." After all, "death is the law of nature."
Sometimes, Gao was also cornered by hospitals, which refused to conduct transplants for fear that the relatives of the dead might take revenge on them later.
"Doctors are supposed to heal the wounded and rescue the dying. Why do they reject the requests of the kind-hearted donors?" wondered Gao.
Currently, China lacks related law to stipulate the rights and duties of the donors and reduce or break down the barriers, let alone a mechanism to promote tissue and organ donation, pointed out the China News Week.
Though a leader of the RCSC had advised setting up a nationwide database for organ donation, China is still in an exploratory stage in this regard, added Huang Jiefu, deputy health minister.
Gao told the China Daily that she hopes China's law on tissue and organ transplants will become more sound and humane, thus making it easier for family members afflicted with the loss of loved ones, and reduce risks which hospitals are reluctant to take.
Data from the Ministry of Health revealed that about 1.5 million patients need tissue or organ transplants every year, which has been motivating Gao to go forward in her career despite various difficulties.
Speaking about whether she is afraid of the bodies, Gao commented, "Why should I be scared? They were good people that are falling asleep forever."
