A project to help needy patients who are suffering from kidney failure but cannot afford the cost of a transplant was launched on Thursday in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The Novartis Foundation for Kidney Transplants Between Relatives is part of a nationwide program launched by the Ministry of Health's International Exchange and Cooperation Center and the Novartis Foundation for People and the Environment.

Zhou Jian, of the Ministry of the Health, announced the launch of the project in Xi'an yesterday at the second seminar of the Cooperative Program for Organ Donation and Transplant in China.

More than 100 ministry officials, Novartis executives and experts on organ transplants participated.

Paul Lau, president of Novartis China, said that the company will invest 1 million yuan (US$120,000) in the project from 2004 to 2006, to help kidney donors provide organs to their relatives.

In China, transplant between relatives is the only way to obtain kidneys from living donors. However, many would-be donors are stymied by money shortages: because the donor is not ill, he or she must pay the entire cost of the operation and related treatments.

The trading of organs from living donors is banned in China, but donation of organs to relatives is legal and encouraged.

Swiss pharmaceuticals maker Novartis has been promoting organ transplants in China for 20 years.

(China.org.cn, China Daily June 4, 2004)