February 4, 2026 7:00am by David Farrar

The failure of organ donation reform

Ani O’Brien has a long and excellent piece on the failure of organ donation reform.

The TLDR version is:

  • Strategy released in 2017
  • Law change passed in 2019
  • Funding of $3 million a year for implementing new strategy derived in Budget 2022
  • Organ Donation NZ used all the new funding for existing operations, rather than implementing the new strategy to increase donor rates
  • Donation rate in 2017 was 73 and in 2024 was just 70

It is simply unacceptable.