The Hindu : Law needed to promote organ donation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 13, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Law needed to promote organ donation

By Alladi Jayasri

BANGALORE Oct. 12. Devi Prasad Shetty of Narayana Hrudayalaya performed the first heart transplant in the State three years ago, and the patient died within 10 days. After Narayana Hrudayalaya became the fourth recognised centre for transplantation of heart and lungs a few months ago, a list of 15 to 20 hopeful recipients is all that it has to show for progress.

"A couple of patients have died, and the fact that those who need transplants are in the age group of 20-30 makes for a grim picture indeed," says Dr. Shetty.

The reason is there are no donors. Organ donation is hardly a matter for discussion.

When death visits people whose heart could give someone else a new lease of life, there is nobody to persuade the families of the brain-dead to donate organs.

In the U.S., over 2,000 heart transplants take place annually. A federally funded programme on organ sharing makes for a high order of cadaver organ transplant, and this includes kidney, liver, tissues, and any organ that can be transplanted.

Awareness on the importance of organ donation can be created through campaigns and publicising the work of organisations such as Foundation for Organ Retrieval and Transplant Education (FORTE), a Bangalore-based organisation that has facilitated over 31-cadaver organ transplants.

Sensitising the staff of intensive care units of hospitals to broach the subject with the families of potential donors has been largely a non-starter. Programmes to promote and popularise cadaver transplants receive only lip service, and this itself is a violation of the Transplant Act.

There are many other problems too. Little attention is being given to organ donation with the Government considering tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS more important for policy interventions.

There is no statistics of patients needing transplants, let alone that of donors. Efforts are on by FORTE to convince the Government to adopt a law making it mandatory for hospitals to request the families of patients diagnosed as brain dead to donate organs.

A rule in this regard has been adopted in the U.S., where all hospitals have a cell of counsellors who are trained in grief counselling and persuading the kin of the brain dead to donate organs. But there is no obligation on the part of hospitals in the country to do this.

Dr. Shetty finds this to be the main cause for organ donation to be a non-starter.

Being a licensed transplant centre, he can tell his patients that there is a ray of hope for them.

The fact is that he has to depend on organisations such as FORTE to facilitate transplants.

His hospital, which is known for bringing hope to the poor that cardiac care can be affordable or even free, spent over Rs. 70 lakh on patients in the past one year through its charitable wing managed by Lakshmi Mani.

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