Nephro Plus, engaged in related donor transplants for kidney, think that there is a need India should tweak Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA) to substitute ‘Explicit Consent’ with ‘Presumed Consent’ to speed up transplants in the country.
India, like many other countries in the world, has an ‘Explicit Consent’ policy which requires consent to be taken of the immediate family of the person who is brain-dead for the organs to be recovered for use by those who need them, Kamal Shah- co-founder & director Patient Services, NephroPlus told Pharmabiz.
“Instead of this, we could change the policy to one of ‘Presumed Consent’ where it is assumed that the organs can be harvested unless the family explicitly states that they would not like the organs to be retrieved. This could be a controversial topic but it needs to be discussed,” he added.
“The public needs to be made aware of the benefits especially if they or a loved one is at the receiving end. We need something novel and out-of-the-box to address this problem in the country and this could be one of the options that can be considered,” Shah pointed out.
The country also faces a huge shortage of organs. Though about 1.5 lakh people in India need a kidney transplant, barely 5,000 kidney transplants happen every year. This is very sad because due to the lack of awareness and many misconceptions around organ donation, organs are lost when they could have saved lives, said Shah.
Renal transplants are the only answer for end-stage kidney failure. If the regulations for transplants are revised ensuring that there is no possibility of misuse, then ‘Presumed Consent’ would transform the scene for organ donation. Even though countries like US and Europe which follow an Explicit Consent protocol, they are seen to continue facing a huge organ shortfall and it is only because of the increasing number of patients requiring transplants, said Shah.
Convincing the family of the deceased or brain death cases to donate organ is a sensitive issue. Yet a dedicated counselors at the hospitals across the country have done a commendable job to ensure that organs are donated without regret. “At Nephro we are currently engaged in related living donor and swap transplants, and contemplating on cadaver transplants. Then this is where we see the need to replace the norm ‘Explicit Consent’ with Presumed Consent in HOTA to speed up transplants,” stated Shah.