No heart: Just a lakh pledge organs in five years

Tribune News Service

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New Delhi, November 30

India’s organ donation story remains grim with barely a lakh pledges for donations received by the central registry since it was set up.

The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), the apex central body tasked with promoting organ donation since 2011, has been struggling to encourage donations, but success rate has been poor.

On the occasion of the 7th Indian Organ Donation Day today, Health Minister JP Nadda raised concerns over the trend and said India had set itself the target of 20 lakh organ donations by 2017-end. However, so far NOTTO has received only about one lakh pledges.

“Ten thousand pledges were received till June 2016 but the numbers have gone up to one lakh now,” Nadda said today in the presence of actor Randeep Hooda, who has pledged his organs.

“We must work towards improving the standard of organ transplantation so that donated organs are successively used to save lives. While doing this, we must balance speed, skill and scale effectively to achieve the desired outcomes in organ donation and transplantation. Only 10,000 pledges were received till June 2016, something that has increased to more than 1 lakh at present, which is quite encouraging. We have set a target of 20 lakh pledges by 2017-end,” the Health Minister stated.

The minister added it’s urgent to strengthen the infrastructure and capacity of human resources for retrieval and transplantation of organs. He said government hospitals must come forward and ensure that both are done in the right way.

Experts, meanwhile, said linkages between retrieval of organs and transplantation need to be strengthened as well and a coordinated effort is required between NOTTO and its state organs to bring vigour to India’s organ donation campaign.

Of late, many steps have been taken to simplify organ donation law and rules, but the desired outcomes have not been achieved.

The website of NOTTO (www.notto.nic.in) provides updated information and online facility for registering pledges for organ donation. A 24x7 call centre with toll free helpline (1800114770) is available for information on organ donation and on retrieval and allocation of organs recovered from cadaver donors. 

The National Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplant Registry (NOTTR) has been launched and NOTTO has also launched a national registry to maintain a national waiting list of patients who require organs and tissues. 

The networking of transplant and/or retrieval hospitals has been started initially in Delhi and NCR, Nadda said. Five regional organisations called Regional Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (ROTTO) have also been identified by the government at Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Assam, West Bengal and Chandigarh for networking and coordinating procurement and distribution of organs.