The official Malaysian COVID-19 contact tracing app, MySejahtera, might soon find its use beyond the pandemic. Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin recently revealed that a feature is under development to allow Malaysians to register themselves for organ donation through the app.
The minister said that Malaysia has one of the lowest donation rates in the world and wants to make registering easier. Coincidentally, the Ministry of Health (MoH) already promoted organ donation signups through MySejahtera’s homepage last month by providing a link, but Khairy mentioned that the upcoming feature will be an “in-app” registration, similar to the recent self-test report update.
With Malaysia’s opt-in system, there are currently almost 500,000 individuals who have pledged to become organ donors after their demise, a little over 1.5% of the entire population. Interestingly, the country also does not allow living donations, such as a kidney or partial liver transplant, to anyone other than family members.
While waiting for the MySejahtera implementation to actually happen, those interested in pledging to be a donor can go to the Derma Organ website to find out more information and to register with the National Transplant Resource Centre. Alternatively, you can manually fill in the form at government hospitals or clinics as well as visit any organ donation drives that could be happening near you.
(Source: The Star)
