After the launch of their online organ transplant registry on March 19, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission will unveil a new policy to regulate organ transplants in the country, and the nation's hospitals which conduct organ transplants are expected to see a major re-shuffle, Chinese-language Beijing News reports, citing Huang Jiefu, chairperson of the China Human Organ Donation Committee.

The new policy demands that hospitals which carry out transplants list organs on the registry, or risk disqualification, while those which privately distribute organs or use the organs outside the national organ registration system, including those done for foreign patients, will also be disqualified, Huang said.

The committee plans to police the more than 169 hospitals which currently carry out organ transplants in China.

Over 600 hospitals used to carry out transplants in the country, which led to a lot of confusion and corrupt practices, however, in 2005, the health authority restructured the organ transplant system, certifying 169 hospitals. Due to limited organ supplies, however, some organs still come from private transactions.

Since April 2011, when China established a pilot organ transplant registry among the 169 certified hospitals, only 157 have established waiting lists for organs, only 70 have used the automatic distribution system when harvesting organs, and only 88 have received organs through the system.

Currently, the 169 hospitals lag far behind the actual demand, because as many as 300,000 patients are in need of organ transplants in the country, so the committee estimates that a further 100 hospitals must be added to the scheme to satisfy demand.

The committee launched a registry in August 2013 for China's human organ distribution and sharing, demanding all the certified organ-transplantation hospitals set up organ procurement organizations (OPO), non-profit organizations responsible for the evaluation and procurement of donor organs for organ transplants, but supervisory bodies have found that some hospitals still have haven't complied with these instructions. Since the pilot schemes began in 2011, about 5.3% of organs have gone missing during the distribution process.

Following the establishment and expansion of the OPOs, the committee will announce a mandatory policy to require all donor organs to be registered on the nation's human organ distribution and sharing system for automatic distribution. Violators will be disqualified from carrying out organ transplants, Huang said.