Jeevandan, a state-run department, promoting and facilitating organ donation programmes in Telangana, has crossed a significant milestone of securing organs from 400 organ donors since its launch 4 years back in 2013.

Ever since its launch, Jeevandan has strived very hard to promote organ donation in the state.  Though in the initial days it was tough for the organizers to convince the relatives of the deceased to donate organs to save life of someone, over the period through its persistent efforts it could emerge successful and today slowly the concept of organ donation is gaining acceptance by the public.  

“Jeevandan is a unique and first of its kind initiative, ever taken up by any state government in the entire country. The main objective of this initiative is to promote and encourage organ donation and save lives of terminally ill.  Today we could achieve a milestone of 400 organ donors, only because of persistent efforts of creating awareness and promotion,” says Dr. G. Swarnalatha, in-charge of Jeevandan organ donation scheme, government of Telangana.

Though the landmark achievement reflects the increasing acceptance towards organ donation, however the fact remains that the waiting period for patients needing donors’ organs continue to be very high.  At any given point of time, the number of patients waiting for donor organs in Telangana is anywhere between 4,500-5,000 patients. A majority of them are registered for kidney and liver transplantation at top corporate hospitals in Hyderabad.

According to healthcare experts, even though the government had set up a department to promote organ donation, the reality remains that except the Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences, which is a semi-government health institution, the entire ecosystem for organ donation is yet to be developed in the state.

In the recent past, the state-run major hospitals like Gandhi and Osmania government General Hospitals have achieved the distinction of conducting first of its kind organ transplantation surgeries, these hospitals are still lacking a dedicated and advanced infrastructure for conducting organ transplant surgeries. Moreover, even though 100s of brain-dead cases are reported there is still no dedicated family grief counselling process or protocols for declaration of brain-dead patients in these hospitals. “A successful organ donation scheme must have a well-developed family grief counselling process, protocols for brain dead declaration, trained neuro-physicians to declare brain death and a dedicated organ retrieval and transplantation teams. In addition to this we need hi-tech operation theatres,” says Dr. Swarnalatha.

However, some of the super speciality hospitals in Hyderabad have a well-developed ecosystem for organ donation including dedicated teams for counselling bereaved family members of trauma patients. As a result, over 90 per cent of the organ donations, retrievals and transplantation are done at private hospitals in the state. This imbalance has forced patients to register themselves at private hospitals in Hyderabad, in the hope of getting quick access to donors.

According to statistics revealed by Jeevandan during 2013-2017, the organization has retrieved organs from 409 deceased trauma victims, of which only Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences and Osmania General Hospital contributed only 20 organ donations, while the rest of 389 were done in private hospitals.  “There is definitely an improvement seen in the perception among the people towards organ donation, however, there is still a lot to be done to increase awareness among public in the rural areas in the districts,” observed the Jeevandan in charge.