Governance

KEY POINTS

·         Organ donation is based on public trust that due process is being followed.

·         For this to succeed, people must have utmost trust in the process of organ donation and allocation.

·         Even in highly developed countries, donation rates drop temporarily when news of suspicious practices surfaces.

·         In India, this is even more important as controversies such as these can break a developing programme and bring us back to square one.

·         For example, the recent findings in Tamilnadu that foreign patients who are waiting for a donor heart transplant are being prioritised over Indian patients.

·         These suspicious activities will have a great impact in reducing the donation rate.     

·         A reduction in donation rate will affect patients waiting for organs as each donor can save up to seven lives.

·         These scandals or rumours does no good to the system and can cause immeasurable harm to sick patients desperately waiting for organs.

Fine-tuning the process

·         The process should be made more transparent and accessible to the public.

·         If donation and the allocation of each organ can be tracked, that will be a strong deterrent to mischief.

·         Most importantly, the outcome of every transplant should be monitored.

·         It should be made mandatory that the transplanting centre should report the outcome of the organ and the patient with updates at one week, one month and one year after transplantation.

·         Another option is to develop a system of zonalisation across the country (like in the U.S.) so that more efficient sharing of organs across States is feasible.

·         This will significantly benefit transplant programmes in government hospitals.

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