Only 23 Percent Donated Organs Reach Needy Patients

Data from the ministry of health reveals that only 23% of donated organs are transplanted to needy patients. Mainly living donors are donating organs while retrieval from the brain dead is not picking up, the ministry said. “There is a need to promote cadaver or deceased organ donation rather than relying on living donors in order to avoid the risk of commercial trading of organs and also to avoid the inherent risk to the health of the living donor. There is a need to spread awareness in the community at large that a living person can save the life of only one person but a deceased or cadaver organ donor can save up to 9 lives by donating vital organs,” Anupriya Patel, minister of state for health said.

There have been many challenges before the government to get dead donors and fully utilise the donated organs. “Apart from promoting organ donation, it is also important to improve the infrastructure and capacity of government hospitals to undertake transplantation so that the poor and needy could benefit,” Patel said.

The National Biomaterial Centre (National Tissue Bank) at the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO) in Safdarjung Hospital was made functional. The national level tissue bank aims to fulfil the demands of tissue transplantation including procurement, storage and fulfil distribution of biomaterials.

Congratulating Safdarjung Hospital on this initiative, Smt Anupriya Patel stated that deriving inspiration from this more and more government hospitals should come forward and take up organ transplantation task to benefit the poor and needy patients of India.

Source-Medindia