“Since there was no suitable recipient on the mainland, the mainland decided to send the donor heart to Hong Kong for transplanting to Whitney upon confirmation by experts from the two places that the heart was suitable,” said Simon Tang Yiu-hang, director of cluster services at the Hospital Authority.

Whitney was the second baby from Hong Kong to receive an organ procured from the mainland under exceptional arrangements between authorities on both sides of the border. The first – four-month-old Cleo Lai Tsz-hei – received a heart from the mainland in December 2022, which was successfully transplanted.

Tang said authorities put Whitney at the top of the city’s heart transplant list on September 26 last year, owing to her deteriorating condition. She was later added to the second-tier waiting list of the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS).

Established in 2013, COTRS is a national database that records donors, available organs and patients waiting for transplants. It also allocates organs that become available.