As a critical measure for treating patients with end-stage organ failure, organ donation and transplantation has become an important benchmark reflecting a country’s comprehensive capacity in healthcare, modernization of governance and progress in social civilization. In 2024, the total number of organ transplant procedures worldwide exceeded 180 000, representing an annual growth rate of 2.4%. China ranked second globally with 24 000 transplant procedures, accounting for 13.8% of the global total. Meanwhile, driven by the growing burden of transplantation-related non-communicable diseases, the global demand for organ transplantation has reached an all-time high. At present, the global development of organ donation and transplantation features a landscape of coexisting strategic opportunities and risks and challenges. On the one hand, technological breakthroughs and institutional innovations have accelerated the rapid development of the field. On the other hand, issues such as uneven regional development, supply-demand imbalance, and lagging governance remain to be addressed. This study integrates multi-dimensional authoritative monitoring data, systematically summarizes twelve key characteristics of the global organ donation and transplantation sector, distills ten major developmental features and regional leading effects of China at the current stage, and elaborates on the practical connotation and contemporary value of the “Chinese Model”. The findings not only provide important references for countries to promote the sustainable development of the industry, narrow regional development gaps, and improve the equitable access to medical resources, but also offer comprehensive research support and scientific decision-making basis for China to consolidate its developmental advantages, refine Chinese solutions, and deeply participate in the construction of the global organ donation and transplantation governance system.

Currently, driven by rigid health demands, technological iteration and innovation, and the reshaping of the global development landscape, the global field of organ donation and transplantation presents a development trend featuring "continuous expansion of transplantation scale, diversified donor sources, multiple breakthroughs in core technologies, and sustained optimization of supporting policies". Meanwhile, it still faces profound challenges including prominent contradiction between supply and demand, unbalanced regional development, increasing governance difficulties, and lack of dynamic adaptation of ethical norms. Under the continuous initiative and promotion of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and relevant international academic groups, organ donation and transplantation have become an important issue for promoting the harmonious development of human society and improving global public health governance. At the present stage, the reshaping of the global development pattern and the impact of uncertainties in the international situation cannot be ignored, which not only brings challenges to transnational cooperation in the field of organ donation and transplantation, but also forces all countries to accelerate the construction of an independent, controllable, safe and efficient working system. Based on the development characteristics revealed by data insights, this paper further sorts out the innovative practical progress, policy evolution context and latest orientations of countries around the world in solving the development dilemmas of organ donation and transplantation in recent years, analyzes the core challenges and prospectively judges future policy trends. It not only provides experience reference for countries to carry out industrial governance, but also consolidates the decision-making foundation for China to build an independent knowledge system and a discourse system with Chinese characteristics, and deeply participate in the construction of the global governance system.

The global distribution of medical resources is uneven and organ shortages are becoming increasingly serious. ASEAN countries have been working hard to explore and promote local organ transplantation in order to alleviate the serious imbalance between organ donation and organ transplantation needs. However, the development of cadaveric organ donation varies among ASEAN countries, and the cadaveric organ donation rate in most countries is generally low. Since 1991, China and ASEAN have evolved from dialogue to strategic cooperation, then to a community with a shared future, and further to a comprehensive strategic partnership, all demonstrating broad prospects for cooperation. This article analyzes the current situation and challenges of organ donation and transplantation in ASEAN countries, combining field visits and its own experience, and proposes strategies for strengthening international cooperation, optimizing policy environment, enhancing technical capabilities, and increasing public awareness in the field of organ donation and transplantation under the China-ASEAN development strategy framework. The aim is to build a more equitable, efficient, and sustainable organ donation and transplantation system, contributing to the realization of global public health security and a community of common health for mankind.

Objective To refine and summarize the research status and development trend of organ donation discipline in China. Methods Relevant Chinese and English literatures related to organ donation were searched from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Web of Science core collection database from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2022. Visual analysis was performed by the CiteSpace software from the number of published articles, keywords, journal source distribution, cooperation network of core authors, main research institutions, and citation of key literatures, etc. Results A total of 792 articles were published from 2018 to 2022, with an average annual number of 158 articles, which showed a rapidly upward trend. Among them, 182 articles were published in the form of postgraduate dissertation, accounting for 23%. Common keywords included organ transplantation, brain death, cardiac death, willingness/cognition/attitude, legal system, influencing factor/risk factor, infection/complication, Organ Procurement Organization, prognosis/quality, education for college students/medical students, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, children, ischemia-reperfusion injury, donor-derived infection, ethics, expended criteria donor, nursing and coordinator, etc. Keyword clustering hotspots focused on the theme of “organ donation” and branched into multiple disciplines. The publications of research results were characterized with pluralism and diversity, and the research contents were centered on medicine and spanned a wide range of disciplines. A large proportion of researches were published by the teams from large-scale organ transplantation institutions, and relatively close cooperative relationship was formed within the institutions. However, the intensity of cooperation among different institutions was relatively low, and the cooperative relationship among authors was insufficient, which failed to form an intimate academic network. The top five countries worldwide regarding the number of published articles were the U.S. (n=940), U.K. (n=377), Spain (n=263), Canada (n=241) and China (n=181), indicating that the achievements of Chinese researchers have been gradually recognized in the international academic community. Conclusions From the quantity and content of published articles in recent years, “organ donation” has laid certain research foundation in China. It is one of the topics concerned and widely studied by multiple academic communities in China. Relevant research issues have multidisciplinary, plural and diverse characteristics.

In recent years, organ donation and transplantation have entered a stage of steady development in China. Nevertheless, the shortage of transplant organs and the contradiction between supply and demand of organs are still the bottlenecks to achieve the strategy of "self-sufficiency in organ transplantation" advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO). The key reasons for donor loss described in the "critical pathway of organ donation" defined by the WHO include the identification and referral of potential donors and the maintenance and repair of organs. Smooth development, high efficiency and high-quality development of organ donation cannot be achieved without the support of intensive care medicine, which are highly associated with the cognition, recognition and participation of intensive care unit(ICU) staff. In this article, research progress in ICU staff’s cognition, attitude and willingness for organ donation were reviewed and relevant influencing factors were discussed, aiming to offer targeted suggestions on how to resolve these difficulties.

Organ shortage is a prevalent problem within the global transplantation community. World Health Organization (WHO) calls on all countries to achieve self-sufficiency in organ transplantation by reducing the burden of diseases and expanding the effective source of organs in line with ethical principles. Donation after brain death (DBD) remains the major source of transplant organs. In recent years, some Asian countries, including China, have actively promoted the development of donation from deceased organs, which are gradually reshaping the situation of living organ donation as the main source of transplant organs in Asia. The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 slowed down the growth trend of global organ donation and transplantation in the past decade. On the premise that the burden of disease and the need for transplantation have not been significantly reduced, the work of organ donation and transplantation in China has been steadily carried out under the guidance of the general policy of epidemic prevention and control and relevant policies of "Put people and their lives first, and adhere to the dynamic zero-Covid policy". This proves to a certain extent that under the continuous drive of the people's medical demands and transplant demands, China has formed an organ donation and transplant work system with resilience, pressure resistance, operational inertia and the survival of the industry. Look at Asia from China, and look at the world from Asia. In this article, by compiling relevant data of organ donation and transplantation in Asia and around the world, the changes of the overall pattern of organ donation and transplantation in Asia during the new developmental trend of global organ transplantation were illustrated, the influencing factors of DBD were identified by analyzing the developmental characteristics and practical experience, and corresponding effective strategies were proposed, aiming to provide professional reference for sustainable and healthy development of organ donation and transplantation in China and throughout Asia.

At present, interdisciplinary integration has become a major feature of the development of science and technology, and multi-disciplinary integration will gradually become the norm. Professional and technological multi-disciplinary integration has unpredictable potential, which will produce new disciplinary frontiers, new fields of science and technology and new patterns of innovation. Organ donation is a new discipline in China's new era. Constructing and promoting an organ donation disciplinary system with the overall goal of safeguarding legal and reasonable rights and interests of donors and their families and the health rights and interests of the recipients are in line with the fundamental requirements of maintaining high-quality development of organ donation and transplantation in China. Meantime, organ donation is a complex medical and social behavior, and organs donated by citizens belong to national resources, which also endows organ donation with a social welfare attribute and relevance with all parties in society. In this article, the essence of current problems encountered during organ donation in China, the whole process of organ donation and theoretical knowledge, professional skills and personnel support required by donors in different clinical stages were analyzed to illustrate the necessity and feasibility of establishing an organ donation disciplinary system based on multi-disciplinary integration. Besides, how to integrate organ donation disciplinary construction into the national policy was also investigated. Taking safeguarding the rights and interests of donors, family members and recipients as the core and taking organ donation and transplantation as the main line, cooperative principles of co-creation, co-construction, mutual promotion, sharing and win-win should be upheld, aiming to promote multi-disciplinary integration and comprehensive talent cultivation of organ donation, jointly enhance the recognition rate and donation rate of organ donation, and make organ donation widely recognized by citizens from all walks of life.

Public trust is the foundation for supporting the sustainable development of various social donation systems. However, the construction of trust system is continuous, long-term, and easily lost and difficult to defend. This study explored the multi-object and multi-dimensional trust demands of the public, donors and their families in interpersonal, system, social and supervision aspects. It was proposed that participating institutions and practitioners should take the multidimensional claims as an action-oriented, break the crisis of trust by building two major support systems centered on the public and donors’ families, and jointly safeguard the sustainable and high-quality development of organ donation.

Objective At present, the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) pandemic is still raging in certain regions around the globe, and the prevention and control of the pandemic should be strengthened. Under the challenges of respective social environment and allocation of medical resources, and support from the inertia and inherent productivity of the system on which the industry depends, extensive attempts are being delivered to push forward the work of organ donation and transplantation in each country. Under the guidance of national experts and committee members, Shanxi Provincial Human Organ Procurement and Allocation Service Center was established on August 28, 2018 approved by the former Shanxi Provincial Health and Family Planning Commission. It is the only independent non-profit medical institution in Shanxi Province. In this article, the system construction of citizen's organ donation and transplantation fitting national and provincial conditions was further explored according to the data analysis of organ donation and transplantation in the United States and Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic combined with the implementation of organ donation work in Shanxi Provincial Human Organ Procurement and Allocation Service Center.

Organ shortage is a common problem in the field of transplantation worldwide. It is urgent to expand the donor pool via different effective and safe approaches. Recently, "the statement from international collaborative on expanding controlled donation after the circulatory determination of death (cDCDD)" has attracted widespread attention from scholars. The statement aims to promote cDCDD in order to increase organ donation rates, with the ultimate goal of achieving self-sufficiency in transplantation. In this article, the key contents mentioned in the statement were summarized, the terminology update and relevant discussion of donation after the circulatory determination of death (DCDD), the development trend of DCDD, the basic part of the clinical pathway of cDCDD and the key factors affecting the implementation of cDCDD were illustrated, and the inspiration drew from this statement to the sustainable development of organ donation program in China was reflected.