Reforming Taiwan’s Living Kidney Donation Policy: Achieving Consistency and Healthcare Equity

Taiwan faces a critical organ shortage: over 8,500 patients await kidney transplantation while only approximately 430 transplants are performed annually1. Living donor transplantation offers superior outcomes—higher graft survival, better renal function, and improved quality of life2—yet access is severely constrained by an unjustifiable regulatory disparity. While living liver donation permits donors from blood relatives within five degrees of kinship and relatives by marriage with minimum age 18, kidney donation remains restricted to blood relatives and spouses only, with minimum age 20.