India requires a centralized registry for organ donation to enable faster access for patients requiring transplants, said medical experts.
On the occasion of the World Organ Donation day observed annually on August 13 highlights the importance to motivate people to donate the organs and understand the value of organ donation.
Currently, India has a deceased donation rate of 0.05- 0.08 per million population which is among the lowest globally. There is a need for 2 lakh kidneys, 50,000 hearts and 50,000 livers for transplantation every year. Kidney failure fatality is reported every 5 minutes. Over 500,000 people are awaiting organ donation and almost 300 succumb due paucity of donor organs.
A key causes is a lack of awareness and a proper centralized registry for organ donation, this supplemented by religious myths. Hospitals have an agenda to create nationwide awareness the need for organ donation.
The government should bring in changes to organ donation laws to attenuate the situation. With the acceptance of brain death, it became possible to not only undertake kidney transplantations but also start other solid organ transplants like liver, heart, lungs, pancreas, corneas and skin tissue said Dr Dilip C Dhanpal, consultant urologist, Apollo Hospitals, Jayanagar, Bengaluru.
Since a decade, organ donation from the deceased has started to gain a lot of momentum. We need to also find a solution to utilize the potentially large pool of trauma-related brain deaths for organ donation, said Dr. Dhanpal.
There are myths in donating an organ among the people in the country as they view brain dead is temporary and possibilities of recovery. Many also feel that using the organs of the brain dead person’s is useless, he added.
Eye donation is in vogue, yet there is a serious shortfall of donors. According to Dr. Raghu, medical director, Dr. Agarwal’s Eye Hospital, corneal blindness is the third highest cause of blindness after cataract and glaucoma. Currently there are over 1,20,000 corneal blind people in the country and their number is increasing by 25,000-30,000 every year. It is estimated that by 2020 people with corneal blindness would go up to 10.6 million and the only way to give them back their vision is through corneal transplant. Amongst all organ transplants, the success rate of corneal transplant is around 95%. Further, a single pair of eyes can give vision to 4 potentially blind people making it a noble cause.
However, it is disheartening to note that only 22,000 corneas are donated of which only 30% is utilized due to poor tissue quality and delay in collection. Though the situation is changing in urban areas it has to improve further. It calls for greater participation by the youth, co-ordination and infrastructure for retrieval, said Dr. Raghu.
Dr. H. Sudarshan Ballal, chairman, Manipal Hospitals said, that Organ donation remains one of the top healthcare priorities in India. Despite major advances in medical science, organ transplant is the only alternative in certain cases to save life. One donor can save 8 lives through organ donation and save 50 through tissue donation. Organ transplants can drastically improve the quality of life of the recipients and give them another chance to live.
Dr. C. Vikram Belliappa, consultant surgical gastroenterologist, Vikram Hospital said that the major challenge in cadaver organ donation program is the lack of awareness about the concept of "Brain Death" among the people. Spreading awareness needs to be undertaken by health care providers & the government.