Silver and golden commemorative card organ donation volunteers received. Photo: Ji Yuqiao/ GT

China's "green channel" to transfer donated organs has helped increase the one-year survival rate of liver recipients to 92.5 percent and heart recipients to 90.8 percent, reaching leading levels globally, the National Health Commission announced on Tuesday.

The green channel gives an organ carrier priority at security checks and flights, which enables the plane to depart first. Police and relevant authorities work together to guarantee the smooth transport of the organs on ambulances. 

The system has shortened the transport time by an average of 1-1.5 hours, increased the organ utilization rate by 6.7 percent, and expanded the scale of feasible organ sharing, said Guo Yanhong, an official from the National Health Commission, at a press conference in Shanghai.

On August 19, it only took a donated organ five hours to reach Wuxi in East China's Jiangxu Province after a 1,200-kilometer trip. 

By shortening the transport time, the organ is better maintained, increasing the success rate of surgery and recipients' survival rate, said Liu Changqiu, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The green channel also helped reduce the transplant costs, as before that a patient had to charter a plane to do the transport, Chen Jingyu, a surgeon, said at the press conference.  

After a national organ sharing system allowing fair and efficient allocation was built, the demand for long-distance organ transport propelled the establishment of such a green channel in 2016, Liu said. 

The channel was used 978 times in 2017 and 1,665 times in the first nine months of 2019. From January to September, 22 airlines have joined the organ transport, dubbed as "a race against time," from only 13 in 2017.

From 2015 to 2018, the number of organ donations increased from 2,766 to 6,302. In 2018, the number of organ donations ranked second in the world, and organ transplant surgery exceeded 20,000, thanks to the organ sharing system and the green channel.