The Administrative Organization of Organ Transplantation in Switzerland

Background/Problem
Until today, there have been no legal rules dealing with the organizational aspects of transplantation activities in Swiss hospitals. When an organ is harvested, there are, again, no laws governing the attribution of that organ. Swisstransplant, a private foundation that serves as a national co-ordination centre, is based on a consensus among professionals, i.e. it works without any legal basis. Swisstransplant allocates the organs to a transplantation centre, not to a specific patient. Each transplantation centre then decides which patient it will attribute the organ to, following internal guidelines developed over the years. It is therefore submitted that in Switzerland, even though transplantation seems to be performed efficiently and satisfactorily, it is performed without any real democratic control.

Objective
This research project aims at gathering and analyzing relevant information from different systems to establish a catalogue of possible solutions regarding the most appropriate administrative framework for organ transplantation. That should prove especially valuable in the context of pending Federal legislation on organ transplantation.

Approach
The study will explore legal and administrative solutions found abroad for three different problems related to organ transplantation :
- the accreditation of transplantation centres ;
- the legal status and activities of a national co-ordination centre ;
- the rules applicable to organ allocation.