THE FINDINGS of an independent audit of retained organs in all Irish hospitals will be published by the Health Service Executive (HSE) today.
The audit has been conducted by Michael Willis, a former member of the UK’s human tissue authority as well as a former chair of its committee on organ retention.
Ms Willis’s fieldwork included visits to all hospitals in the State that carry out postmortem examinations. The audit covered organs and tissue retained, including those of deceased infants and children. The exercise has been conducted arising from a key recommendation from the report by Dr Deirdre Madden into postmortem practice and procedures at Irish hospitals.
One of the key findings of the report by Dr Madden was the need for new laws to ensure no postmortem examination would be carried out and no tissue or organ retained without authorisation from the family of the deceased person. Dr Madden is a law lecturer in UCC with an expertise in the medico-legal sphere.
Copies of the report will be given in the first instance to parents and families involved in organisations who have campaigned to highlight the practice. It will be made available to the wider public later today. Earlier this year, the Department of Health held a public consultation on a new draft for human tissue legislation, arising from another recommendation of the Madden report.
The draft proposals provided for regulation of the removal, retention, storage, use and disposal of human tissue from deceased persons, and the use of donated tissue from living persons for the purposes of transplantation and research.