- In Tamil Nadu, the deceased donor rate is 1.3 per million people, while the India average is 0.5 to 0.8 per million people
- Due to its ‘presumed consent’ policy, Spain’s deceased donor rate is 34 to 36 per million people. Anybody who is declared brain dead is considered a donor, irrespective of family wishes
From Deccan Chronicle 12/12/2011
The number of cadaver
organ transplants may
have come down in Tamil
Nadu, but organ donation
by the living is flourish-
ing.
Countries such as Spain
and the US have brought
down the rate of living-
donor transplants to negli-
gible by urging people to
pledge organs, but double
surgeries are the in thing
in Chennai hospitals.
While few people are
lucky to have a relative
willing to part with a kid-
ney or a piece of liver that
suits the recipient, hun-
dreds, including foreign-
ers, with weak hearts or
failing kidneys are on the Tamil
Nadu
Organ
Sharing Network list
waiting for organs from
the brain dead.
“In Tamil Nadu, there
are around 1,500 people on
the common list waiting
for kidneys,” said Dr Sunil
Shroff, managing trustee
of MOHAN (Multi-Organ
Harvesting Aid Network)
foundation.
With around 1,60,000
people dying in road
mishaps in the country
every year, the pool of
potential
brain
dead
donors is large.
“In fact, if all brain dead
accident
victims
are
declared, maintained and
taken up for organ
retrieval, there would be
no need for the living to
donate organs to rela-
tives,” said Dr Shroff,
pointing out that a large
number of organs went waste because hospitals
dithered in declaring
brain deaths.
“The first step is to make
declaration
of
brain
deaths routine, like decla-
ration of death, or any
other medical condition.
A brain death has now
become synonymous with
organ transplant and
that’s why some doctors
are reluctant to declare
it,” Dr Shroff said.
Left with no choice but
living donors, surgeons
have started performing
swap transplants — combo
surgeries involving two
donors — in desperate
times, even using the
immensely expensive but
temporary artificial heart
device to keep patients
alive