Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what comparative assessment he has made of the number of BAME organ donors and longer transplant waiting times for patients from those backgrounds.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is the organ donor organisation for the United Kingdom and is responsible for promoting organ donation and the matching and offering of donated organs.

Patients from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities are more likely to need an organ transplant as they are more at risk of disease that require transplant of diabetes. The national deceased donor consent rate for the BAME community in 2016/17 is 35% compared to 66% in the white population and, on average, patients from BAME communities will wait a year longer for a kidney transplant than a white patient, due to the lack of suitable organs.

We remain committed to tackling this issue and supporting work to increase donation rates. It is encouraging that we have seen the highest increase in deceased donor and transplant rates from these communities, with increases of 27% and 15% respectively since 2013, but we need to do more and are actively looking at the best way to do this.

NHSBT has produced a comprehensive report on data for donors and patients from BAME communities for 2016/17, which can be found at:

https://nhsbtdbe.blob.core.windows.net/umbraco-assets-corp/4480/bame_organ_donation_and_transplantation_data.pdf