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This is Story in the Story.

China has more than 300,000 registered organ donors, according to the China Organ Transplant Development Foundation.

About 262,500 organ donors had registered as of the end of 2017, almost 10 times more than in 2015. The counts for 2015 and 2016 were 25,959 and 115,867, respectively, according to Zhao Hongtao, an official with the foundation.

China banned the use of organs from executed prisoners in January 2015, and made the voluntary donation the only legitimate source. 

With the system more fair and transparent, the number of organ donors is growing and public awareness is rising.

(Photo: South China Morning Post)

In 2017, China had recorded 5,148 cases of after-death organ donation, and almost 16,000 vital organs were donated nationwide, an increase of 25.9 percent from 2016.

However, there are about 300,000 Chinese patients waiting for organ transplants, but only 16,000 receive surgeries each year.

In 2016, the foundation, backed by the National Health Commission, launched an organ donation function on Alipay, an online payment platform where users can easily register as organ donors through just a couple of clicks.

Today's Story in the Story will look at the first foreigner to donate organs in China's Guangdong.

(Photo: Xinhua)

A Greek man touched the hearts of many local residents after he became the first foreigner in Guangdong Province to donate organs.

Sherif El Gazzar, 37, who used to do business in Zhongshan, a Pearl River Delta city in Guangdong, fell ill on Aug 17 and was sent to a local hospital. He was transferred to Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou the next day and died the night of Aug 22.

His family decided to donate his organs to help people in need. His older sister signed the organ release forms on Thursday, witnessed by many of Gazzar's friends as well as Grigorios Tassiopoulos, consul general of Greece's Consulate General in Guangzhou, and Li Jingdong, director of the organ donation office of the Guangdong Branch of the Red Cross Society of China.

On Thursday evening in Zhujiang Hospital, Gazzar's kidneys were respectively transplanted to a 50-year-old man who suffered from serious uremia and a 30-year-old woman who had renal failure.

At the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, his liver was transplanted to a 46-year-old hepatitis B patient who had a serious hepatic failure, while his heart was transplanted to an unnamed patient.

"The Chinese patients are in stable condition and are recovering inwards after the organ transplantation surgeries," Zhao Ming, a professor from the Zhujiang Hospital, told local media on Friday.

Gazzar is the 10th foreign organ donor in the mainland.

(Produced by Nancy Yan Xu, Terry Guanlin Li, Raymond Mendoza and Lance Crayon. Music by: bensound.com. Text from China Daily and Xinhua.)