China will in the next two years set up a databank on renal failure suffers who might be in need of organ transplants.

The scheme was included in an agreement signed?in Beijing on?Saturday by the National Institute of Hospital Administration (NIHA) of the Ministry of Health and the Shanghai Roche Pharmaceuticals.

The databank is aimed at "optimizing the reasonable use of the limited organ supplies in China," said the agreement.

Currently, there are 1 million sufferers of kidney failure in China. Many of them could have been saved through organ transplant, but only very few of them have had the chance to have a donor at the right time, said Liang Minghui, chairman of the NIHA.

China has built a data bank to register sufferers after renal transplant, covering 118 hospitals and 40,000 cases.

Liang said the programs would be conducive to the regulation and improvement of the kidney transplant services in the country.