“If we want to do a better job for people on transplant lists and we really do, it’s the living donations that we have to focus on - especially the opportunities around kidney and livers from living donors,” said Health Minister George Smitherman, who will release a task force report on a new approach to organ donations within the next few weeks.

“There are not enough organs available to be harvested from people who pass on to meet the backlog of people, especially for kidneys and liver.”

Smitherman pointed to British Columbia’s model as one worth examining.

“We need to look hard at how we can support (donors),” he said. “For some people there could be concerns about job security and for other people obviously underlying concerns about the costs associated with missing work and all of those things.”

In Ontario last year, living donors provided kidneys to 221 people while 253 patients received kidneys from the deceased. Currently there are 1,142 patients on the kidney transplant list where they spend five to seven years waiting for a donor. Source...