Organ donation in India is regulated by the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994. The law allows both deceased and living donors to donate their organs. It also identifies brain death as a form of death. [1] The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) functions as the apex body for activities relating to procurement, allotment and distribution of organs in the country. [2]
Although India performed the second largest number of transplants in the world in 2019 (after United States), it lags far behind the western nations like Spain (35.1 pmp), United States (21.9 pmp) and United Kingdom (15.5 pmp) in national donation with a donation rate of only 0.65 per million population (2019) due to its huge population. [3] [4] According to the World Health Organization, only around 0.01 percent of people in India donate their organs after death. [5] [6] Some of the reasons behind such poor performance are lack of public awareness, [7] religious or superstitious beliefs among people, and strict laws. [8] There is a huge gender disparity among organ donors in the country as women donate disproportionately high while being disproportionately low number of organ recipients. [9]
In 2019, the Government of India implemented the National Organ Transplant Programme with a budget of ₹149.5 crore (US$18 million) for promoting deceased organ donation. [2] [10]
The Government of India enacted the Transplantation of Human Organs Act in 1994 to curb organ trading and promote deceased organ donation. After facing a multi-billion rupee kidney scandal in 2008, an amendment was proposed in 2009 [11] and passed in 2011 to get rid of loopholes which previously made illegal organ trading possible. [12] [13] [14]
The states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh were the frontrunners in organ donation during the initial years. Following the establishment of the Indian Network for Organ Sharing (INOS) in 2000, the two states retrieved 1,033 organs and tissues between 2000 and 2009. [15] [16] In 2018, Tamil Nadu had an organ donation rate of 1.8 pmp, which was seven times higher than the national average (0.05-0.08). [3]
The number of deceased organ donations in India grew gradually from 2012. The total number of multi-organ deceased donors in 2012 throughout India was 196 (0.16 pmp). The deceased organ donation rate doubled from 196 donors (0.16 pmp) in 2012 to 411 (0.34 pmp) in 2014. [15]
Organ donors can be living or dead. The type of organ donations are as follows:
Living donors are permitted to donate the following: [17]
Living donors must be over 18 years of age and are limited to donating only to their immediate blood relatives or, in some special cases, out of affection and attachment towards the recipient. [17]
Deceased donors may donate six life-saving organs: kidneys, liver, heart, lungs, pancreas, and intestine. Uterus transplant is also performed, but it is not regarded as a life-saving organ. [18] Organs and tissues from a person declared legally dead can be donated after consent from the family has been obtained. Brainstem death is also recognized as a form of death in India, as in many other countries. After a natural cardiac death, organs that can be donated are cornea, bone, skin, and blood vessels, whereas after brainstem death about 37 different organs and tissues can be donated, including the above six life-saving organs. [2]
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure where one organ removed from one person and placed in the body of a recipient. [19] Vital organs such as the heart, pancreas, liver, kidneys, and lungs can be transplanted from the donor to a person whose organs are failing, known as the receiver.
Studies have suggested that the chances of the transplantation being successful are enhanced by reducing the time delay between harvest and transplant of the organ. [3] Therefore, transportation of the organ is a critical factor. For this purpose, "green corridors" have been created in many parts of India. [20] A "green corridor" refers to a route that is cleared out for an ambulance carrying the harvested organs to ensure its delivery at the destination in the shortest time possible. [21] The hospitals involved in a transplantation, city traffic authorities, and in certain cases, airport authorities collaborate to transport an organ from one hospital to the next. [22] [23] The formal name of "green corridor" was given in July 2014 when a hospital and police in Chennai coordinated to transport a heart from one hospital to another in half the regular time. [20] The system has been used effectively in cities such as Mumbai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Indore. [22]
Green corridors are generally used for transporting heart and liver, which have the shortest preservation times of four to six and 12 to 15 hours, respectively. [24] The means of transportation is often by road, but air ambulances are also employed when the organs require transportation to different cities or states. [25] [26] Usage of green corridors expedites organ transplantations while also ensuring that there is no organ wastage. [22] But the process of setting up a green corridor is complex, since it requires coordination of multiple stakeholders. [23] Due to the inconvenience to the public when using roads for this purpose, more prevalent usage of air ambulances or drones [27] has been suggested to the government. [20] [24] [28]
All states participate in the federal legislation except Andhra Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, [29] with Andhra Pradesh having its own law. [30] As of 2019, the nationwide deceased donation rate is around 0.34 per million population, much lower than developed countries. Some developed countries have adopted an opt-out system, which considers every citizen an organ donor unless they decide to 'opt-out'. Usage of such a system in India has been recommended by medical experts. [31] [32] However, some others believe that it may not improve donation rates in India due to its high illiteracy rate and lack of public awareness. [7]
As of 2019, 13 of the 36 states and union territories have contributed to deceased donation in India. [33] Most of the deceased donation programs have been developed in the southern states. [34] The potential for deceased organ donations due to brain death is high in the country. About 80,000 persons die due to road accidents every year. An estimated 50% of such deaths are due to brain death. If the country's donation rate were to be improved to 1 per million population, it would satisfy the country's organ requirement completely. [35] The deceased donation rate consistently rose from 2012 to 2017, increasing more than four times. But since 2018, it has slowed throughout the country. [33]
The Government of Andhra Pradesh has its own law to regulate organ donation in the state. The Andhra Pradesh Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1995, was enacted by the government shortly after the central act. [30] The deceased donor program functions under the banner of Jeevandan since January 2013 in the state. The deceased organ donation rate as of 2014 is 0.6 pmp. [15]
The Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka is the government body that oversees the transplantation process in the state of Karnataka. Between 2007 and 2012, Karnataka has recorded 58 deceased organ donations. However, there was a huge gap between the number of organs donated and the number of recipients waiting for a transplant. [36] In 2018, the state registered 90 organ donations. Over 90% of the donations came from private hospitals. [37]
The city of Indore in Madhya Pradesh had 34 green corridors as of 2018, all created within the previous three years. It became the first city to have a green corridor in the air after using an aircraft to transport organs in July 2017. [21]
The Zonal Transplant Coordination Center (ZTCC) in Mumbai and Nagpur oversees organ transplantation activities in Maharashtra. [15] Between 2012 and 2014, the state recorded 116 organ transplants. [15] In 2018, 135 donations were recorded. [37] In 2019, Maharashtra overtook Tamil Nadu and Telangana in organ donations with 447 organ transplantations. [38] The ZTCC has also conducted programs together with more than 20 NGOs to improve public awareness. [38]
The state of Tamil Nadu had the most deceased organ donations in the country until 2018. It ranks first in deceased organ donation rate at 1.8 pmp as of 2018, [39] a figure seven times higher than the national average. [3] In 2008, the Government of Tamil Nadu made brain death certification mandatory in the state and established the Cadaver Transplant Programme. [40] [41]
A major stimulus for organ transplantation awareness in the state is said to be a motorcycle accident incident in 2008, after which the physician parents of the 15-year-old accident victim donated all of their son's organs. [42] [41] This incident generated widespread attention and support for deceased organ donation in the state and was dubbed the "Hithendran effect" after the name of the donor. [41] [43]
However, from 2018, organ donations in the state dropped due to a controversy over preference given to foreign patients. [44] In 2019, Tamil Nadu recorded only 128 donors. [45] By 2019, the state had transplanted 7,783 organs from deceased donors. [45]
Numerous government and non-government organisations work in the domain of organ donation in India.
Source [15]
Source [2]
Source [46]
In India, there is a huge gender gap putting women at disadvantage in terms of organ donations. A report by the NGO MOHAN Foundation found that 80% of live organ donors in the country during the years 1995 and 2021 were women, while being only 18.9% of the recipients. According to the surgeons, the disparity can be due to many factors, such as women lacking independent income which economically incentivizes men as primary bread-winners to be prioritized, [47] having little bodily autonomy, conditioning of women to be emotionally givers by the society and vulnerability of women being victims of domestic violence.
Another factor is men being more prone to liver diseases due to their relatively more consumption of alcohol compared to women, so men will need more livers compared to women. It was also found that offering kidneys to their husbands by women is very common but the converse is not. When a woman has a liver disease, mostly children donate organs to the woman as her husband is, in many cases, too old to be a donor. [9]
One way to reduce gender disparity, surgeons suggest, is to replace live transplants with cadaver transplants - to harvest organs from dead bodies for transplants - although it won't be sufficient as enrollment of recipients is expected to be skewed towards men due to factors such as women's priority being low in Indian families and women don't have a lot of agency to make such decisions. [9]
Organ donation is the process when a person authorizes an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive, through a legal authorization for deceased donation made prior to death, or for deceased donations through the authorization by the legal next of kin.
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.
Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor or living-donor transplantation depending on the source of the donor organ. Living-donor kidney transplants are further characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related (living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological relationship exists between the donor and recipient. The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 by a team including Joseph Murray, the recipient's surgeon, and Hartwell Harrison, surgeon for the donor. Murray was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for this and other work. In 2018, an estimated 95,479 kidney transplants were performed worldwide, 36% of which came from living donors.
Body donation, anatomical donation, or body bequest is the donation of a whole body after death for research and education. There is usually no cost to donate a body to science; donation programs will often provide a stipend and/or cover the cost of cremation or burial once a donated cadaver has served its purpose and is returned to the family for interment.
Organ procurement is a surgical procedure that removes organs or tissues for reuse, typically for organ transplantation.
Organ trade is the trading of human organs, tissues, or other body products, usually for transplantation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), organ trade is a commercial transplantation where there is a profit, or transplantations that occur outside of national medical systems. There is a global need or demand for healthy body parts for transplantation, which exceeds the numbers available.
In December 2006, The UK Government set up the Organ Donation Taskforce to identify barriers to organ donation and recommend actions needed to increase organ donation and procurement within the current legal framework.
The practice of selling one's kidney for profit in Iran is legal and regulated by the government. In any given year, it is estimated that 1400 Iranians sell one of their kidneys to a recipient who was previously unknown to them. Iran currently is the only country in the world that allows the sale of one's kidney for compensation ; consequently, the country does not have either a waiting list or a shortage of available organs.
Healthcare in Chennai is provided by both government-run and private hospitals. Chennai attracts about 45 percent of health tourists from abroad arriving in the country and 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. The city has been termed Health Capital of India. Multi- and super-specialty hospitals across the city bring in an estimated 150 international patients every day. Factors behind the tourists' inflow in the city include low costs, little to no waiting period, and facilities offered at the speciality hospitals in the city.
MOHAN Foundation is a not-for-profit, registered non-government charity organisation in India that works in the field of deceased organ donation and transplantation. MOHAN is an acronym for Multi Organ Harvesting Aid Network.
Sunil Shroff is the managing trustee of a non-government and non-profit organisation called MOHAN Foundation and is well known for his work in the field of deceased donation transplantation in India. He has worked towards improving the deceased organ donation rate in India.
Allegations of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other political prisoners in China have raised concern within the international community. According to a report by former lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann of the US government-affiliated Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on-demand" in order to provide organs for transplant to recipients. Reports have said that organ harvesting has been used to advance the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Gong and because of the financial incentives available to the institutions and individuals involved in the trade. A report by The Washington Post has disputed some of the allegations, saying that China does not import sufficient quantities of immunosuppressant drugs, used by transplant recipients, to carry out such quantities of organ harvesting. However, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation alleged that the Post's article made an “elementary statistical error” and omitted unofficial pharmacy data in Chinese hospitals.
Organ donation is when a person gives their organs after they die to someone in need of new organs. Transplantation is the process of transplanting the organs donated into another person. This process extends the life expectancy of a person suffering from organ failure. The number of patients requiring organ transplants outweighs the number of donor organs available.
Dorry L. Segev is the head of the Center for Surgical and Transplant Applied Research at NYU Langone Health. Previously he served as the Marjory K. and Thomas Pozefsky Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and associate vice chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has made significant contributions to the field of transplantation, including developing a mathematical model to facilitate a nationwide kidney paired donation program, both in the US and Canada. He is also known for his role in getting the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act signed into law.
The Trillium Gift of Life Network was an agency of the Government of Ontario responsible for the province's organ donation strategy, promotion, and supply. Ronnie Gavsie was the President & CEO. The agency maintained the popular BeADonor.ca website. It was subsequently subsumed under Ontario Health in 2019.
The current law in Ireland requires a potential donor to opt in to becoming an organ donor. However, it is ultimately up to their family to make the decision whether or not the person can donate their organs after they die.
Ernesto Pompeo Molmenti is an American transplant surgeon, scientist, and author. Currently practicing in Reno, Nevada. He is Chief of Transplantation at Renown Health, Executive Director of the Renown Transplant Institute, Director and Executive Vice President of the Nevada Transplant Institute, and Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.
The Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences is an Indian hospital chain based in Telangana. It was founded by Dr. Bhaskar Rao Bollineni in 2000 in the city of Nellore. Currently, the KIMS Group operates 12 hospitals across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Maharashtra. The KIMS Hospital Group is certified by NABH and NABL. It is listed on BSE and the NSE.
Organ transplantation in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu is regulated by India's Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 and is facilitated by the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) of the Government of Tamil Nadu and several NGOs. Tamil Nadu ranks first in India in deceased organ donation rate at 1.8 per million population, which is seven times higher than the national average.
Uma Preman is an Indian social worker from Kerala. She is the founder of Santhi Medical Information Center, a nonprofit charitable organization that provides medical guidance, care and rehabilitation for patients with limited income and resources.