Venue – Ramalingaswami Board Room, Director’s Office, A.I.I.M.S., New Delhi

Date – 26th November 2011

Patrons [...]]]> Dr.J.Amalorpavanathan, Convenor, Cadaver Organs Transplant Programme, Government of Tamil Nadu participated in the National Consultation to standardize the proforma and preparing guidelines for Screening of Potential Multi Organ Donors in New Delhi on 26/11/11

Venue – Ramalingaswami Board Room, Director’s Office, A.I.I.M.S., New Delhi

Date – 26^th November 2011

Patrons – Director, AIIMS and Chief, Cardio Thoracic Centre, AIIMS

Chief Guest – Sh. P.K. Pradhan, Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Govt. of India

Guest of Honour – Dr. R.K. Srivastava, Director General of Health Services, Govt. of India

AND

Prof. K.K.  Talwar, Chairman, Board of Governors, Medical Council of India and President, NAMS

Medical personnel must liaise closely with the police department regarding organ transplantation as they could provide immense help, said [...]]]> From http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article2402456.ece

Meenakshi Mission Hospital holds organ donation awareness programme

pledge: K. Magudapathy, Assistant Commissioner of Police (traffic), addressing an awareness programme at Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre in Madurai on Friday. Photo: G.Moorthy

Medical personnel must liaise closely with the police department regarding organ transplantation as they could provide immense help, said J. Amalorpavanathan, Transplant Coordinator, Cadaver Transplant Programme, Government of Tamil Nadu.

Apart from several ethical dilemmas in organ transplantation, logistical problems also affected transplantation.

He was addressing an organ donation awareness programme (deceased donor transplantation – kidneys, heart, liver and eyes) organised here on Friday by Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre (MMHRC).

Highlighting the significance of police help, he recalled how the police department blocked traffic at Chennai’s busy Anna Salai on a New Year’s Eve to facilitate the quick transport of a heart, flown down from Madurai, from the Chennai Airport to Mogappair.

The dilemmas of allotting this scarce resource included whether the beneficiaries should be chosen on basis of who was the sickest or treating every one equally or whether simplicity should be hallmark. The Tamil Nadu model had been evolved by studying and customising the U.S.A., U.K. and Mumbai models. It was a dynamic model with constant evolution. Discussing the regulatory framework in India and organ allocation principles and practices, he said that if a patient died, even in a private hospital, his organs belonged to the society. The hospital must contribute at least one pair of organs to the State pool before utilising the rest.

The main issues involved accurately identifying if the patient was brain dead, obtaining the family’s consent, ensuring the donated organs got transparently distributed and following all the laws of the land.

In India, organ transplantation was governed by the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 along with its subsequent rules, Government Orders and guidelines of Advisory Committees or Coordinating Agencies. The Act was reviewed in 2004 following a Delhi High Court order. Subsequently, a Parliamentary Standing Committee had submitted a bill in August 2010, which was passed by Lok Sabha this August and was pending in the Rajya Sabha.

Addressing the gathering of medical professionals, Dr. Amalorpavanathan urged them to strike a balance between profit motives of private healthcare and the patient centric allocation. He asked them to prioritise medical ethics and involve the civil society as a stake holder.

Speaking earlier, K. Magudapathy, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Madurai City, said that doctors were among the most respected in this society in which most people look at doctors as emissaries of the gods. He also pledged to donate his organs or his families should such a situation be possible.

K. Sampath Kumar, Head of the Department and Senior Consultant Nephrologist, MMHRC, said that the programme was intended to create awareness in southern districts about organ transplantation, which hitherto had been carried out mainly in Chennai and Vellore.

K. Selvamuthukumaran, Senior Consultant Nephrologist, MMHRC, Dinakaran, head of Madurai Kidney Centre, spoke.

Special Correspondent

PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN Sharing views:Former Judge of the Supreme Court A.R. Lakshmanan speaks on organ donation at a function organised by SPT Hospitals in Coimbatore on Sunday. —

COIMBATORE: Former Supreme Court Judge AR. Lakshmanan declared here on [...]]]> From http://hindu.com/2010/09/20/stories/2010092060210600.htm

Special Correspondent

PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN

Sharing views:Former Judge of the Supreme Court A.R. Lakshmanan speaks on organ donation at a function organised by SPT Hospitals in Coimbatore on Sunday. —

COIMBATORE: Former Supreme Court Judge AR. Lakshmanan declared here on Sunday that he would work to remove legal hurdles that hindered the donation of organs of accident victims who were declared brain dead.

At a programme to spread awareness on organ donation as part of the anniversary celebrations of SPT Hospitals, Mr. Justice Lakshmanan said he had come to know that the application of the legal custodian clause by the police in medico-legal cases ate into the very little time that was available for harvesting eyes.

Once the victim was declared dead, the police cited rules to claim custody of the body and it was released only after post-mortem. This prevented the donation of eyes, which could be harvested even after a person was dead. It was also improper on the part of doctors to certify in the report that organs were missing. “This is legally wrong,” he said.

The former Law Commissioner Chairman and his wife Meenakshi Lakshmanan pledged their organs as part of promoting donation.

Convener of Tamil Nadu Cadaver Transplant Programme J. Amalorpavanathan said that after the launch of the programme, 680 people in the State had benefited from organs harvested from brain dead persons.

The World Health Organisation recently decided to take up the Tamil Nadu programme as a model and the State’s performance was 12 per cent more than the rest of the country.

Managing Trustee of A.P. Hithendran Memorial Trust S. Ashokan said people should first know what brain death meant.

They should not misconstrue that a person would die only if the heart stopped beating.

Dr. Ashokan and his family donated the organs of his son, Hithendran, two years ago when he was declared brain dead after a road accident.

“When there is irreversible damage to the brain, the patient is legally and medically dead. It is against medical ethics to keep the patient in the intensive care unit in such a condition,” he said.

Chairman of the hospital S.P. Thiagarajan said more awareness should be generated among the public in order to step up organ donation.

The session lasted for more [...]]]> On 07-04-2010, Dr.T.Venkatachalam, Professor of Anaesthesia, Madras Medical College was invited by TCS Sholinganallur branch for an interactive session with their employees on ‘Brain Death and Organ Donation’ in connection with the World Health Day celebration. Around 150 persons attended the meeting in which he was the Chief guest.

The session lasted for more than one and a half hours and many of the audiance actively participated and at the end of the session many of them wanted to register themselves for organ donation.

This kind of interactive sessions will defenitely help to spread the awarenes of organ donation and improve the services offered by all of us.