Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing Nicola Sturgeon has urged Scots to sign up to the organ donor register to help meet the new target of increasing the number of donors by 50 per cent in the next five years.

The target is included in the Organ Donation Task Force's report on organ donation in the UK, 'Organs for Transplant', published today.

The report’s recommendations for improving organ donation rates include plans for a UK-wide organ donation organisation to be established, and that a UK-wide network of Organ Retrieval Teams should be set up to ensure timely retrieval of organs.

It also says that the current network of donor transplant co-ordinators should be expanded, and adds that all parts of the NHS must embrace organ donation as a usual, not unusual event. Local policies must be put in place and all clinical and nursing staff likely to be involved in organ donation should receive training.

Sturgeon said: "I welcome today's report from the taskforce and can confirm that Scotland is fully committed to implementing its recommendations.

“The shortage of donor organs for transplantation is an increasingly acute problem and we are determined to tackle this.

“I want everyone to seriously consider signing up to the register and for this important issue to become widely discussed.

“This is an issue that many people already give serious consideration to and it's impressive that more Scots have put their names on the Organ Donor Register than in any other part of the UK.

“Despite this, Scotland still has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the EU and it's clear that we need to do much more to increase the number of donors. That is why I have asked the Scottish Transplant Group to take forward implementation of the recommendations in Scotland.”

There are currently 700 people in Scotland awaiting an organ transplant, and John Forsythe, the chairman of the Scottish Transplant Group and a transplant surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, said: “In the last few months, in our unit, quite a large number of patients have deteriorated and died whilst waiting for a lifesaving transplant. Indeed approximately 1000 patients across the UK either die whilst waiting for a transplant or are removed from the waiting lists because they are too sick.

“The recommendations from the Task Force and the resource made available to back these recommendations, are highly likely to make a huge difference to this situation.”

A separate study is being carried out, on a UK-wide basis, to look at the issue of presumed consent, and Sturgeon added: “Although today's report does not deal with the issue of presumed consent, I want to repeat that I am sympathetic towards the idea of introducing a system of presumed consent and I welcome the fact that the task force is considering the risks and benefits of this approach.”

On Sunday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown also backed the opt-out idea in a newspaper article.