Mumbai: State medical education minister Girish Mahajan recently wrote to the Tata Trust for help in creating a mechanism to boost cadaver donation in Maharashtra. Mr Mahajan requested the Tata Trust to design a model urging government hospitals to identify and declare brain-dead patients and counsel their families to donate organs.

“The state government has requested the Tata Trust and a NGO, Mohan Foundation, to boost the organ donation campaign in the state. The government has sought help from the Tata Trust to design a model to activate government hospitals into identifying and declaring brain-dead patients and counseling their families to donate organs. Thus, I have written a letter to the Tata Trust, requesting them to support the government in creating such a model,” said Mr Mahajan.

Dr T.P. Lahane, joint director of the Directorate of Medical Education and Research, told The Asian Age, “The government has a healthcare set-up in remote areas, too. But due to lack of knowledge regarding brain-dead patients, we fail to retrieve organs from them as their relatives are not comfortable.”

“We need to train doctors and paramedics to identify brain-dead patients. If this happens, the organ donation campaign in the state will get a boost,” he said.

Promoting cadaver donation of the brain-dead will go a long way in helping lakhs of people in the country awaiting their turn to undergo an organ transplant surgery.