I am shocked, disgusted, angry, appalled at the blatant disclosure of the name of a hit-and-run victim who consented to the donation of her organs to the Sultanah Fatimah Specialist Hospital in Muar.

No doubt, the sacrifice of the donor resulted in the opportunity afforded to four beneficiaries to benefit from the transplant of the donor’s lung, kidney and liver. There is, however, a policy in regard to donors that must and should be upheld by policymakers and the media.

I am aware that public affairs in Malaysia today has become a matter of `song and dance'. We have become a nation of pretenders, takers and users, hypocrites one and all, even using the `dead and dying' for our political spin, to uplift our dying political image, careers and future after being exposed for the rogues and rats that we are!

Those in the medical profession - such as operating surgeons, doctors, physicians - are not exempt from expectations that they carry themselves in decorum and poise.

It is thus disgusting and unethical when these same people violate what I consider to be three of the most cardinal rules to be adhered to in relation to organ donations:

(i) The non-disclosure of the donor's name;

(ii) protect the donor family’s right to privacy and

(iii) avoid highlighting displays of magnanimity by public figures such as ceremonies to hand over their mock cheques - the money often does not belong to them.

Is it because organ transplant have become big business now - listed in certain stock markets abroad?

Or is it because it’s just another way to gain honorifics, grants running into millions, new social stature, the opportunity to rub shoulders with politicians and the other rich and powerful of the land?

But at whose expense and to fulfill whose needs? At what costs to the donor, donor family, privacy and ethics?

They must stop immediately!

There are many operating surgeons in the country who have been putting in their `heart and soul' into dedicated service without fanfare. They follow strictly their profession’s code of ethics, which seems to have been lost on some of those now in the profession?

Let us keep our hospitals and, in particular, the good deed of donors, free from media spin and the hands of publicity-hounds.

This will be among the issues I will raise when I meet the health director-general Dr Ismail Merican.

I am happy to know the majority of those who have either pledged or donated their organs are Non Muslims!

I have no problems in media stories highlighting the need for donors or press statements urging or reporting on the present state of organ donations in the country!

I am delighted to know we have managed to get 18 kidneys, a heart, six livers, 20 heart valves, 25 corneas, three skin and nine bones!

I am happy to have discovered, for example, that:

- in 2009, 39 people donated their organs, of whom 20 were family-initiated (an improvement from previous years)

- between 1976 - 2009, 271 people have donated 571 organs and tissues in Malaysia

- 137,556 people have pledged their organs. Of the donors, 74,354 were women

- Selangor tops the list with the highest number of organ pledges at 27,951, followed by Johor (23,871), Penang (19,737), Federal Territory (18,457) and Perak (16,992)

- of those who donated, 153 were Chinese, 71 Indians, 16 Malays and the rest of other races.

I wish also to congratulate the hard-working people at the Health Ministry's National Organ Transplant Resources Centre.

The writer is president of the Consumers Association of Subang and Shah Alam, Selangor (Cassa)