Southern States
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Karnataka
Organ transplant authority in coma
By Alladi Jayasri
BANGALORE JAN. 24. If the monitoring of the implementation of the Organ Transplantation Act, 1994, is left to the Appropriate Authority constituted by the Government, Karnataka may well have to learn to live with its reputation as an organ-trading destination.
Although news of the kidney racket in Mandya District broke on January 15, the authority has not seen it fit to hold an emergency meeting, let alone call for details and initiate action as it is empowered to do.
A cursory glance at the track record of the authority since inception shows that it came into existence in response to public indignation when the first scandal made shocking news in 1994-95. Headed by the Law Secretary, who is also the Chairman of the Authorisation Committee that clears requests for unrelated kidney transplants on a case-by-case basis, it has five or six members drawn mainly from the Health Department and specialists from government hospitals.
The authority, which issues and renews licences to hospitals and institutions, apart from regularly inspecting them for violations of the Act or Transplantation Rules, did not meet in 2001, barring one occasion when a new transplant centre needed to be considered for registration.
And the irony is that the Authorisation Committee liberally gave clearance for 26 unrelated transplants between June 1 and August 3, 2001.
And, in the earlier case where 221 unrelated transplants were permitted over three years up to 1999-end, the authority has to its credit one solitary attempt at address-verification of the donor -- it was abandoned after several addresses proved to be false.
And to this day, the donors who need to be monitored life-long as they learn to live with one kidney, are untraceable.
The authority has not invoked any of its powers to call the transplant centres to account.
Nothing has come of the July 7, 2001 meeting in the Law Secretary's chambers to unravel the tangled web that the kidney transplant ''industry'' has become.
It was suggested that to make the hospitals accountable, they must submit detailed clinical documents and indications for the transplantation, details of blood groups, and cross-matching reports of all relatives of the patient.
The other suggestions are to make it mandatory for the recipient to be domiciled in Karnataka for at least five years, while the donor must be living with the recipient for a minimum period of one year (to be certified by police) to have ''emotional attachment''.
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