Jump in organ donations after PM’s Mann Ki Baat

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Maan Ki Baat, in which he talked about organ donation, more and more people are coming forward to make the donation, premier health institute AIIMS claimed on Tuesday. In a record, the AIIMS has successfully transplanted 13 hearts this year. Experts at the AIIMS also suggested bringing in the norm of “presumed consent” for harvesting organs in cases of accidental fatalities to improve the rate of organ donation in the country where nearly 50,000 people are in immediate need of heart transplants.

AIIMS director M.C. Mishra said that in the first 10 months of this year, the institute has successfully done 13 heart transplant and it happened after PM’s appeal. “The institute also witnessed a huge increase in queries for organ donation after Prime Minister’s appeal,” added Prof. Mishra.

“It’s been a productive year and with this surgery, now the number of transplants this year has reached to 13, which is a record for any year, since the first transplant. And, two months are still to go, so we hope the number would increase from here on, all the way to 2017,” he added. AIIMS had successfully conducted its first heart transplant in 1996.

Talking about the huge demand for organs, Prof. Mishra said that as per a rough estimate, at any time, 50,000 people in India are in need of heart transplant, about three lakh for kidney transplant, and a lakh each for liver and corneal transplants.

According to him, Spain and few other European countries have the system of “opt-out”, where organ donation happens automatically unless an explicit request is made before death for organs not to be taken. “The system of opt out will improve the scenario. Heart and other organs go unutilised after accidental fatalities, even though patients are in need of various transplants. So, we must have a presumed consent for harvesting organs, but it has to be made legal to address the shortage,” he said.

The organ donation process in the country is administered by the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO). “We should also have such state-level bodies and the district-level harvesting facilities must also be strengthened,” said professor of cardiothoracic and vascular surgery Dr Balram Airan.

Prof. Mishra suggested that the increase in transplant rate cannot be achieved by just addressing one aspect but several other processes must also be streamlined. “We had written to the lieutenant-governor last year for making brain-death notifiable, which was done. Now, we would soon do a workshop for critical care doctors on this subject. Roughly, 10,000 brain deaths take place in Delhi-NCR every year. So, even if we can harness 1,000 of them, we can address the issue,” said Prof Mishra.