Message to India Inc : Donate life

While companies are investing on sensitizing its staff on issues such as LGBT, gender diversity, needs of specially abled staff, companies must also consider a drive on ‘organ donation’.

 Each year, hundreds of people die while waiting for an organ transplant. There is a shortage of organs, and the gap between the number of organs donated and the number of people waiting for a transplant is getting larger. Transplants, as an option, have successful outcomes, and the number of people needing a transplant is expected to rise steeply due to an ageing population and an increase in organ failure.

 Transplantation of organ

Transplantations of one organ from one human being to another have always been a rigorous process which needs lot of care. A heart which is donated must be transplanted with in 4 hour after removal from the donor. The process of organ transplantation is not only done by the doctors for a successful transplantation team effort must be required if one person of team is not cooperating then it is very difficult to transplant any organ successfully. Last month in our country 6 green corridors are made for transporting hearts from the hospital heart was donated to another city hospital where it was transplanted. A successful transplantation of heart required very rigours and fast process where heart was transplanted within 4 hour after the donor was dead. Process of heart transplantation  was start from the doctor who operating the donor, police  in making green corridor, driver who drive the ambulance  as fast as possible  to reach the hospital where heart was transplanted , the team of doctors who are operating the patients who receive the heart.

Transplantation over the past few decades has gradually become the accepted treatment for a number of conditions where organs like the kidneys, heart and liver have irreversibly failed. For a patient with kidney failure an alternative such as dialysis is available till an organ becomes available, but for a patient with liver or heart failure; the only hope of living may be to have an immediate transplant.  Organ donation is a gracious act; it reaffirms our faith in humanity. 

However over the last 10 to 15 years the organ donation process is marred in India due to the stigma attached to kidney donation.  The law prohibits any commercial dealing in organs - such as purchase of kidney from a donor from economically weaker section, but because the demand is so high, the law is difficult to implement and kidney scandals continue to haunt the country where a donor is not adequately compensated. There have been several news reports about organ trafficking in India, putting the spotlight on the shortage of donors. Take, for example, kidney transplants. Against the global requirement of about 600,000 each year, only 60,000 are done. In India, of the 150, 000 to 200,000 people who need transplantation, only 3,500 get it. This scarcity will grow rapidly in the coming years because of an increasing lifespan, rising incidence of end-stage kidney disease, wrong legislative policies are making this problem big.

There should be a uniform legislative policy to augment organ donations and enforce regulatory mechanisms. Organ transplantation is different from other healthcare activities and the law on this subject should be enacted by the Centre. Also needed a centralised regulatory authority to monitor the transplantation procedures, inspect hospitals, and summon the concerned managerial and medical, paramedical staff involved in the procedure. The authority constituted under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 doesn’t have pan-Indian jurisdiction. It should be mandatory to report all transplantations to the central organ donation authority, with details of the donor and the recipient, members of the authorisation committee and the transplantation team. All transplantation s must be registered, which should allot a wait listed number to each registrant.

In the last 12 years there has been great advancement in the field of organ transplantation in India. People are discussing or talked about the problem of donating organ. Now in our country organs have been donated and transplanted from one patient who is brain dead. Government are organizing awareness programs to encourage people for donating their organs. A fort night program from 25th August to 8th September organized by Indian government in order to create mass public awareness and to pledge their eye for donation. Government promotes awareness programmes for organ donation on both electronic and print media and electronic media. OROB- Organ Retrieval and Banking Organisation undertake varies to promote organ donation at the table of colleges, societies and other forum. This makes slowly and steadily changes in urban areas but not so much in rural are

Sale and purchase of organs is illegal:

Wholly throughout the world, the trade of human organs is illegal except in Iran. In India before the Transplantation of Human Organ Act in 1994 the trade in organ was legal and it made India a lucrative market for organ trade for the world, but along with it many problems which emerged in the market. Due to lack of awareness the lower class people were not compensated properly for their donations, on the other hand some cases showed that the patients were actually unaware about the transplantations and there are a lot more cases which would explain the overall scenario of the problems which generally take place in the Organ trade

Heart Transplant:

Heart transplant is the most critical transplantation among all other transplantation of organs. Apart from the relaxation time of transplantation its success depends on many other issues, like the state or condition of the liver, other circulatory action or even age of the receiver body. For a heart transplant, the diseased heart is removed and replaced with the donated heart. During the surgery, a mechanical pump moves blood through the body.

 Kidney Transplantations:

Kidney transplantation takes place generally at the end stage renal-disease. The donor in Kidney transplantation can either be a living person or a deceased person. According to the statistics the most frequent organ transplantation is the kidney transplantation. Kidney transplant is not an emergency surgery and patients can be managed with dialysis. So no patient should die because of non availability of organs. The success rate is very high in this type of transplantation as there are many ways in which a human body can be supported for a while through dialysis in order to purify the blood. Therefore we can say that the criticality of kidney transplantation is comparatively less.

Liver Transplantation:

It is also known as hepatic transplantation. The diseased liver is fully or partially replaced by a healthy and donated liver. It is an option for end-stage or acute liver disease. Immunosuppressive drugs are used to lower the chance of rejection of the transplant by the body and this is the case like all other allograft. Liver transplant is tagged with a controversy where the alcoholic patients get a transplant in order to fight the alcoholic cirrhosis, as other non-alcoholic patients may be considered as more deserving of that transplant.

Eye transplantation:

In eye transplantation the cornea part of the eye is transplanted, therefore, it is also called corneal transplantation. Cornea is the transparent part of the eye.  The cornea rejection in the patient’s eye can occur at any time after the transplantation, even after decades because of several causes.

Intestine Transplantation:

It is one of the rarest types of transplantations due to the high rate of rejection by the receiving body. Due to the improvements in immunosuppressive regiments, it is done on a more frequent basis. Though the options for treatment of the intestine are many, but in some critical cases the transplantation is the only options.

Pancreas Transplantation:

Pancreas is one of the vital organs in our body as it regulates the sugar level in our body. Therefore, generally a diabetic patient goes for pancreas transplantation. It can also be partially replaced as in the case of liver. There are mainly four types of pancreas transplantations.