By: Dr. Amay Tripathi, Associate Editor-ICN
Media is playing an active role in spreading the beauty of life through creative videos. All said and done, organ donation in India is still a huge mountain to scale.
LUCKNOW:There is no gift greater than the gift of life. Resources in the world are limited and people are urged to conserve and optimally utilize what we have. Human organs, when considered in ethical and humane perspective, is a category of resource that holds promise of life for those in dire need.
In India, less than .08 per million population are organ donors, a significantly low number as compared to the rest of the world. An estimated over 1 lakh people are waiting for liver transplant, and over 2 lakh await kidney transplant. In contrast, the number of transplants that took place last year is just about a few hundreds to thousands, not to mention the various other type of organ transplants that are still waiting in ever growing queues.
Currently, more than half a million Indians are estimated to be in dire need of an organ transplant. A look at the following figures would make the picture clearer: every year in India about 500,000 people die because of non-availability of organs. Over 1,000,000 people suffer from corneal blindness and await transplant. All this is due to non-awareness rather than non-availability.
Donating organs is akin to donation of life. This noble cause has gained momentum in recent years, still there is a long way ahead to bring about any kind of parity in the demand and supply sides. There is a need for awareness among public related to the kind of organ donations that can be from deceased or living donors.
Organ donations are legal by Indian law. The Indian government enacted the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA), 1994, which allows organ donation, and legalized the concept of ‘brain death’.
The donor needs to fill a prescribed consent form, which can either be downloaded from the ministry of health and family welfare, government of India (http://mohfw.nic.in/) or accessed from the medical facility that is approached for organ removal.
Organ harvesting from ‘brain dead’ individuals is done after thorough medical authorization and familial consent. In India, even for a donor, the ultimate decision to donate organs after the person’s death, lies with the lawful custodian or the nearest family members.
A simple yet courageous act of letting go from family members can literally lift darkness from the lives of those who are constantly hoping for a miracle in the form of a donor match to their organ requirement. It is, therefore, necessary to spread awareness to entire families and society as a whole.
In order to donate organs, one must get registered as an organ donor by National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO). While a brain-dead person can donate up to eight organs including heart, liver, 2 kidneys, 2 lungs, pancreas and intestines, but one can also save lives while one is living.
Living organ donation is another area that needs to be stressed upon by agencies to enhance awareness regarding how people can donate certain organs like kidney, liver etc and still lead normal lives. Rising awareness is evident through increasing stories of people, including certain celebrities, pledging their organs for donation.
Media is playing an active role in spreading the beauty of life through creative videos. All said and done, organ donation in India is still a huge mountain to scale.
What mars the momentum of this noble endeavor is a multitude of complex factors like red-tapism, superstition or religious sentiments, misconceptions regarding disfiguration of bodies due to organ harvesting, inability of families to let go of their brain-dead relatives, lack of proper infrastructure in the form of trained surgeons, staff and hospital paraphernalia to support timely and efficient organ transplantations.
Lack of an appropriate organ donor is indeed a frequent problem. Another important concern people express is of the misuse or over-commercialization of the organ market in India and worldwide. The shortage of related donor organs, the lack of a deceased donor programme and large scale poverty has led to trafficking in organs.
People discuss the futility of organ donation in light of hefty and often illegal prices extracted from the needy. A change in mindset is the need of the hour to save millions of lives.
Organ donation being a highly emotional and complex subject, requires a robust system of streamlined processes right from the stage of donor registration to organ harvesting to transplantation into the rightful recipient.
All efforts should be directed toward reducing the shortage of organs by promoting deceased organ donation with presumed consent and by educating the public about deceased as well as living organ donations.
Moreover, strict policing for illegal transplants and punishment of all the persons involved is the control measure highly needed to build a transparent and ethical system of organ donation in India.
