Hospital Authority appeals for urgent liver donation for 13-year-old boy

Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority (HA) has appealed to the public for an urgent liver donation for a 13-year-old boy experiencing severe hepatic failure.

The HA said on Thursday that the boy, currently in serious condition at Queen Mary Hospital, has developed severe complications including recurrent hyperammonemia and cholangitis.

“The patient is clinically assessed as requiring an urgent liver transplant and is listed at the top of the liver transplant waiting list for O+ blood group,” the HA said in a statement.

It called on the public to support organ donation and consider donating the organ of a deceased relative for critically ill patients.

The HA also said that it would seek assistance from mainland authorities through the Hong Kong government “as soon as possible.”

Under a cross-boundary mechanism first activated in 2022, organ donations from the mainland become available to Hong Kong patients when no suitable recipients can be identified on the local waiting list where the donation took place.

The authority will ensure all procedures comply with regulations and standards if a suitable liver is found, the HA added.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.