Organ donors: AP loses the top slot to TN

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Bushra Baseerat | TNN

For the last many years, Andhra Pradesh ranked highest in the number of organ transplantations. However, the state has now lost its envious position to Tamil Nadu, not because the awareness levels among organ donors in AP has dipped but because of government apathy.

Statistics in city hospitals throws up an ironical situation. About 10-12 people are dying daily in various hospitals awaiting organs that can be sourced from brain dead patients. And at any given point of time there are 8-10 brain dead patients in different ICUs of city hospitals but only a small per cent of them become organ donors.

It was the same scenario in every state until two years ago when AP was dethroned from its number one slot by Tamil Nadu, whose government took a progressive step, making it mandatory for hospitals to list out its brain dead patients and aggressively started promoting cadaver transplantations. The result? The number of organ donations in the state has doubled ever since the government took this initiative in October, 2008, say experts.

In stark contrast, AP is moving backwards. For two consecutive years — 2008 and 2009 — the city saw only 17 families coming forward to donate organs of brain dead patients. While this year, there has been a slight rise with 16 donors donating 112 organs and tissues. Experts say the numbers are a drop in the ocean.

In 2009, the state had planned to promote cadaver transplantations by easing the organ retrieval norms and by appointing a centralised agency to streamline the organ allocations on a priority basis with Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) as the nodal agency.

Till date, this exercise has remained on paper. Experts say that there is a need to use the huge pool of brain dead donors. “Hundreds of fatal road accidents are reported each month but just about 5% of the transplants are cadaveric. Rest of the donations involve living donors,” says Dr S Saharia, former president, Indian Society for Organ Transplants.

The number of waitlisted patients runs into hundreds in each hospital. Those who do not have a suitable donor in the family enrol themselves for a cadaver transplant and join the scores waiting for for months.