8-month-old receives Hong Kong’s second organ donation from mainland China

An eight-month-old infant has received Hong Kong’s second organ donation from mainland China and undergone a successful heart transplant surgery with the help of a communication channel established after the first cross-border organ donation in 2022.

A government spokesman said on Monday that the baby, Whitney, successfully received a heart donated from across the border at the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital the day before.

“Since there was no suitable recipient on the mainland, the mainland decided to send the donor heart to Hong Kong for transplanting to Whitney upon confirmation by experts from the two places that the heart was suitable for Whitney’s transplant,” Simon Tang Yiu-hang, director of cluster services of the Hospital Authority, said.

Whitney was the second baby from Hong Kong to receive an organ procured on the mainland under exceptional arrangements between mainland and city authorities. The first – four-month-old Cleo Lai Tsz-hei – also received a heart from the mainland in December 2022, which was successfully transplanted.

Nicholson Yam, consultant-in-charge of cardiothoracic surgery at Hong Kong Children’s Hospital in Kai Tak, revealed that the operation on Whitney took around 6½ hours after the hospital received the heart from the mainland on Sunday afternoon.

Whitney remained in the intensive care unit as of Monday morning, as the 24 hours following the surgery was a critical period.

Yam confirmed that the heart was procured from the mainland, adding that the operation was performed by experts dispatched from the National Quality Control Centre for Health Transplantation in Beijing. However, he stopped short of revealing the background of the heart donor.