Spotlight

New Delhi, 9 April 2015

Organ Transplant

DONATION, AWARENESS VITAL

By Dr H R Keshavamurthy

Organ donation and transplant provides a second chance at life for thousands of people each year. The growing disparity between the rich and poor, demand for human organs and availability of technology in the country makes the trading of organs a quick means to riches for some and a relief for others. Invariably organ trade leads to exploitation of the poverty-stricken people by tempting them with financial gains to meet their immediate short-term financial needs.

Each year hundreds of Indians die while waiting for an organ transplant. The reason: there is an acute imbalance between the number of organs donated and the number of people waiting for a transplant. While 2.1 lakh Indians require kidney transplantation annually, only 3000-4000 kidney transplants are done. The situation is not very different in relation to heart transplants. While annually around 4,000–5,000 patients in India require a heart transplant, so far only 100 heart transplants have been conducted across the country.

According to the National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB) 2012-13 report, only 4,417 corneas were available in 2012-13 against a whopping requirement of 80,000-1, 00,000 per year.  There are currently over 120 transplant centres in India performing approximately 3,500 to 4,000 kidney transplants annually. Out of these, four centres undertake approximately 150 to 200 liver transplants annually while some do an occasional heart transplant.

Finding a donor is the critical issue. Lack of awareness and improper infrastructure facilities are the main reasons behind the existing scenario. Administrative hurdles and conservative mindset further affect organ transplant scenario in India. There are number of myths associated with organ donation which need to be addressed to solve this problem. Most Indians generally believe that it is against nature and religion that body parts are mutilated. Some are suspicious that the hospital staff may not work hard to save their lives if they want organs.

Others believe there might be a temptation to declare them dead before they are actually dead. The lack of a centralized registry for organ donation acts as another hurdle for people to donate organs or get data about donors. Further, there is a problem of certifying brain deaths as it becomes difficult to convince relatives of patients for organ donation, if they are unaware of it.

Kidney transplants in the country first started in 1970s and since then India has been a leader in this field in the Asian sub-continent. The evolutionary history of transplants in the past four decades has witnessed commerce in organ donation becoming an integral part of the programme. The Government passed the Transplantation of Human Organ Act (THO) in 1994 which made unrelated transplants illegal and deceased donation a legal option with the acceptance of brain death.

Overcoming organ shortage by tapping into the pool of brain-dead patients was expected to curb the unrelated transplant activity. However, despite the THO Act, neither the commerce has stopped nor have the number of deceased donors increased to take care of organ shortage. The concept of brain death has never been promoted or widely publicized. Most unrelated transplants currently are being done with the approval from an Authorization committee.

In 2011, the Government enacted the ‘Transplantation of Human Organs (Amendment) Act, which made provisions for simplifying the procedure for organ donation. The provisions included retrieval centres and their registration for retrieval of organs from deceased donors, swap donation and a mandatory inquiry by the registered medical practitioner of a hospital in consultation with transplant coordinator (if available) from the near relative(s) of potential donor admitted in ICU and informing them about the option to donate and if they consent to donate, inform the retrieval centre for retrieval of organs.

The potential for deceased donation is huge due to the high number of fatal road traffic accidents and this pool is yet to be tapped. At any given time, every major city would have 8–10 brain deaths in various ICUs. Some 4–6% of all hospital deaths are due to brain death. Annually, road accidents account for around 1.4 lakh deaths and of these almost 65% sustain severe head injuries as per a study carried out by AIIMS, Delhi.  This means there are almost 90,000 patients who may be brain dead.

While it cannot be said that people don’t want to donate, a major problem is that there are no mechanisms in hospitals to identify and certify brain deaths. Plus, no one empowers the relatives of a brain-dead person to save lives by donating his organs. Anyone from a child to an elderly person can be a donor. Organ donation from the brain dead – also referred to a cadaveric donation is still abysmally low in India. While Spain has 35 organ donors per million people, Britain has 27 donors, US 26 and Australia 11, India’s count stands at a mere 0.16 per million people.

What should be done? Signing a donor card is the first step in making your wishes about donation known. A donor card is not a legal document but an expression of one’s willingness to donate. While signing a donor card demonstrates one’s desire to donate organ after death, letting the family or friends know about the decision is very important. That is because family members will be asked to give consent for the donation. The decision will be considered final when they give consent. Vital organs such as heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, pancreas and intestines, and tissues such as corneas, heart valves, skin, bones, ligaments, tendons, veins, etc can be donated in case of brain death.

The recently notified Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Rules (THOT), 2014 has many provisions to remove the impediments to organ donation while curbing misuse/misinterpretation of the rules. These include: The medical practitioner who will be part of the organ transplantation team shall not be a member of the Authorisation Committee constituted under the Act; when the proposed donor or recipient or both are not Indian nationals or citizens whether near relatives or otherwise, the Committee shall consider all such requests and the transplant shall not be permitted if the recipient is a foreign national and donor is an Indian national unless they are near relatives; when the proposed donor and the recipient are not near relatives, the Committee shall evaluate that there is no commercial transaction between the two.

Every authorised transplantation centre must have its own website, which shall be linked to State/Regional/National Networks through online system for organ procurement, sharing and transplantation, and a National Registry on Donors and recipients of Human Organ and Tissue accessible on-line through dedicated website having National, Regional and State level specificities will come into force.

Making organs a commodity is fraught with erosion of social, moral, and ethical values and is not an alternative that can be acceptable to meet organ requirements in a civilized society. The WHO in its statement on the sale of organs clearly states that it violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as its own constitution: “The human body and its parts cannot be the subject of commercial transactions. Accordingly, giving or receiving payment… for organs should be prohibited.” Enhanced awareness among people is needed to encourage people to donate organs. This requires involvement of the civil society, religious leaders and other stakeholders in creating awareness. A comprehensive campaign is indeed the need of the hour. --- INFA

(Copyright, India News and  Feature Alliance)