The Hindu : Panel tightens transplant screening

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 03, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka

Panel tightens transplant screening

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE Dec. 2. With the Lok Ayukta looking over its shoulders, the Authorisation Committee that clears the harvesting of kidneys from live, unrelated donors, has become extremely wary of granting approvals over the past few months.

When "business" was booming, between 1995 and 2001, as many as 1,016 unrelated transplants took place, facilitated by "altruistic and affectionate donation" from casual labourers, coolies, and people below the poverty line.

Since April 2002, about the time when most transplant centres were to be inspected for renewal of their licences, the committee has had only 35 appeals coming before it. Of these, 15 unrelated cases were cleared. Nine cases, where the donor and recipient were not blood relatives, but were second-degree relatives, have also been cleared. Six cases are pending before the committee.

The fact that five appeals were rejected and the recipients told by the committee to register themselves with FORTE (Foundation for Organ Retrieval and Transplant Education), which facilitates cadaver organ donation, is being regarded by Health Department sources as the first sign that the poor are not being perceived as a source of organs any more.

Besides, the shocking case of a donor being murdered within a week of "altruistically donating" his kidney in 1999, which came to light in June this year, appears to have rattled the committee, the hospital (Lakeside) where the transplant was performed, as well as the recipient.

The "agent", Gangadharaiah, had assured the donor, Shiva, that he would be able to buy an autorickshaw of his own with the money he got by selling a kidney. Gangadharaiah and others are accused of paying a man Rs. 5,000 to get rid of Shiva.

In another development, the Authorisation Committee has made H. Sudarshan, who headed the State Task Force on Health and is now Vigilance Director on health for the Lok Ayukta, a member of the committee, as the NGO representative. The State Government reconstituted the committee in January this year, but ignored one of the task force's recommendations to include an NGO representative on the committee.

The earlier committee had the Law Secretary as Chairman and only two other members — the Director of Health and Family Welfare and a professor with specialisation in neurology or nephrology as members.

After sitting on proposals for a whole year, the new committee, notified on December 10, 2001, was reconstituted, with the Law Secretary as Chairman, the Commissioner for Health and Family Welfare, the Director of Health and Family Welfare, a professor of urology from Bangalore Medical College, and the Commissioner of Police or his representative not below the rank of Deputy Commissioner of Police as the additional members.

A July 7, 2001 meeting in the Law Secretary's chambers decided that the committee would take on three additional members — the Commissioner for Health, the City Police Commissioner or his representative, and an NGO representative as additional members.

The intention was to ensure a modicum of accountability and restraint while granting clearances. The NGO representative would help handle refusal sensitively, while the involvement of the police would ensure that touts would not furnish fake addresses of donors, most of whom are untraceable to this day even by Lok Ayukta sleuths. Vanishing donors have made it virtually impossible to determine whether the donation was truly altruistic, or whether money changed hands, with the consequence that implementation of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 has been observed more in the breach, sources conceded.

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