After media reports, indicating that foreigners paying privately are receiving transplants from British donors, the government is considering to ban all private transplants of organs from dead donors in the UK.

Under the new rules, foreigners living outside the UK will still be able to join the NHS waiting list for transplants, but those willing to pay privately will be barred. According to statistics, three Britons die every day waiting for organs.

The move was initiated after the media highlighted a scandal that overseas patients were paying privately to receive organs donated by the Britishers.
The ban was meant especially for people from the EU, being treated as private patients in the UK owing to financial arrangements between EU governments and individual UK hospitals.

According to the data, more than 700 transplants, mostly liver transplants, were carried out on non-UK patients over the past decade. Out of the 631 transplants that used organs from dead donors, 314 were from outside the EU.

Elisabeth Buggins, former chairwoman of the Organ Donation Taskforce, said there was no evidence that overseas patients, who had paid privately for UK transplants, received organs any quicker than British patients on the NHS waiting list.

She also proposed nationalizing agreements between EU hospitals and the NHS.