Tamil Nadu leads in organ donations

Chennai: Though the state boasts of the largest number of organ donations since 1995 and has the lowest demand-supply gap of organs due to the existence of the Tamil Nadu Organ Sharing Network, doctors and NGOs were of the opinion that there is need for increased awareness on the same.

Fortis Malar Hospital, on Tuesday, dedicated a ‘Wall of Tribute’ to honour donors and their family members due to whom, several lives have been saved. On the occasion, Sunil Shroff, founder of Mohan Foundation stressed on the need for awareness to start at hospitals.

“The onus of making donations happen lies with the hospitals. At present, most donations happen in private sector hospitals with few public hospitals participating in the program.

“However, the potential of this program is more in public sector hospitals as most victims sustaining severe brain injury due to road traffic accidents land up in these public hospitals, as these are medico-legal cases,” said Shroff.

In an article written by him in the Indian Journal of Urology, published in July this year, he said an estimated 7,35,000 people die due to chronic kidney diseases globally.

The prevalence of end-stage renal disease requiring transplantation in India is estimated to be between 151 and 232 per million population. If an average of these figures is taken, it is estimated that almost 2,20,000 people require kidney transplantation in India.

Against this, currently, approximately 7,500 kidney transplantations are performed at 250 kidney transplant centres in the country, he said.

“Organ donation rate in the country has increased 10-fold over the last five years from 0.05 per million to 0.5 per million. The country needs to take up organ donation as a priority,” said Dr Avnish Seth, Director, Fortis Organ Retrieval and Transplant (FORT).

“The unavailability of adequate organs for transplantation to meet the existing demand has resulted in major organ shortage crises. As a result, there has been a major increase in the number of patients on transplant waiting lists as well as in the number of patients dying while on the waiting list,” he said.