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British Columbia's pioneering approach to organ transplants helped the province perform a record number of the life-saving operations last year.

B.C. is the only jurisdiction in North America that compensates living donors for expenses such as travel, accommodation and even lost wages related to the transplant procedure.

The province also has the continent's only program that permits altruistic individuals to donate a kidney anonymously to someone on a transplant waiting list.

And B.C. hospitals have greater incentive than hospitals elsewhere to encourage donors, because they receive funds from the government for each transplant, rather than having to finance such procedures from their global budget.

"It's the envy of the transplant field in Canada," Bill Barrable, executive director of the B.C. Transplant Society, said yesterday as the society announced that an unprecedented 262 organ transplants were done in the province last year, up 16 from the previous best year, 2006.

The province achieved the record despite a continuing drop in fatal accidents, which used to provide most donated organs.

Fatalities have fallen because of improved vehicle safety, seat belt regulations and crackdowns on drinking and driving.

"Under the circumstances, we are doing very well," Mr. Barrable said. "This is an outstanding achievement."

The total included 11 major organ transplants by surgeons at Vancouver General Hospital within a 24-hour period last fall, and 23 heart transplants, the highest annual total ever.

Meanwhile, Mr. Barrable said the province's pilot program for anonymous kidney donors has been so successful that it may soon become routine.

Organ donations from people who do not know the transplant recipients have traditionally been shunned over ethical concerns that they could be coerced or motivated by private payments.

But B.C. has imposed rigorous measures to ensure donor and patient do not know each other.

"We've done three or four of them and all have been successful," Mr. Barrable said. "We are now looking at turning our pilot study into a mainstream program."

As for B.C.'s donor compensation system, he said nearly 100 organ donors have been reimbursed for expenses, at an average cost of just under $1,000 a person.

"We'd budgeted for about $3,000 each. It just shows the unselfishness of the kind of people who donate their organs. We're hoping this will become a national program," Mr. Barrable said.

Living donors are increasingly crucial, because fewer than 1 per cent of all deaths produce organs viable for transplant.

Appropriate donors must be on a ventilator and have no discernible brain activity at the time of their deaths, he explained.

Despite B.C.'s transplant successes, waiting lists continue to grow, with just 16 per cent of the population registered as prospective organ donors.