A Senate committee found 70 people died and 249 developed diseases between 2008 and 2015 from organs they received in transplants after an investigation revealed deficiencies in the nation's transplant system, The Washington Post reported Aug. 3.
The report, released Aug. 3, reviewed 100,000 documents from the United Network of Organ Sharing totaling more than 500,000 pages. The errors cited included failures to identify disease in donor kidneys, hearts and livers, as well as blood type matching mix-ups and delays in blood and urine tests that were not completed before operations, according to the Post.
"Far too many Americans are dying needlessly because UNOS and many of the transplant organizations it oversees are failing and seem uninterested in improving," Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in an Aug. 3 news release.