A 50-year-old Hong Kong man with severe heart failure urgently needs a life-saving transplant as health authorities appeal for city organ donations and plan to ask for help from mainland China.
The Hospital Authority on Wednesday said that Chan Wai-ho’s heart function was down to just 20 per cent and that he was in a critical condition in Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam.
“I hope there is a kind person who could help me,” Chan said in a voice recording released to the media.
“No matter what the outcome will be, it is my fate.
“I dare not to hold any expectation or wish. If I can leave [the hospital], lead a basic life, wash my hair and have a bath, I will already be very happy”.
Chan is top of a transplant waiting list of patients of the same blood type and body size who are in need of a heart.
The hospital said they were searching for a suitable heart in Hong Kong, but that they would also look to the mainland to see if there was a suitable organ available.
Cross-border organ donation is at present handled on a case-by-case basis.
A formal system to send organs to Hong Kong if no mainland recipients are identified has yet to be established.
The city government, however, has signalled an intention to create a transfer mechanism.
“When a suitable heart has been located, the Hospital Authority would strictly follow the relevant organ transplant regulations,” a spokesman said.
Chan was aged just 10 when he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition where the heart muscles are thicker than normal and do not relax enough for the organ to fill with blood and pump effectively, in 1984.
He started to show symptoms of heart failure six years ago and was added to a transplant waiting list while he was being treated at Grantham Hospital in Wong Chuk Hang.
Chan’s condition started to deteriorate in June this year and he displayed symptoms such as shortness of breath and poor appetite.
He was later transferred to Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam for further treatment.
Chan was fitted with devices to help pump blood from the lower chambers of the heart to the rest of the body, called ventricular assist devices (VADs).
He was implanted with two VADs between mid-June and July, but a heart transplant is needed as soon as possible because of the risks of an accumulation of blood clots and infection.
Chan said that he used to enjoy dining out with his wife and visiting his mother, but that “it seems I can no longer do things that seemed to be easy in the past”.
Two heart transplants have been carried out in Hong Kong this year and there are 78 people waiting on the waiting list.
There were eight heart transplants carried out in 2023.
Hong Kong also enlisted mainland help in March to find a suitable organ donor for a 37-year-old man with liver failure.
Baby Cleo Lai Tsz-hei was just four months old when she was given a heart donated from the mainland in December 2022.
