BENGALURU:At a time when Karnataka is trailing neighbouring Southern states in organ donation, a proposal to set up organ retrieval centres at district hospitals and at NIMHANS to boost organ donation has been in cold storage for a year. One donor can save eight lives."NIMHANS that receives maximum accident and trauma cases, which are potential brain dead donors, has estimated Rs 4.5 crore that will be needed to set up such a centre. Though it's a Central government hospital, the state had agreed to give money for setting up the centre. But no allocations have been made so far," said Dr TS Prabhakar, Joint Director, Medical, Department of Health and Family Welfare.
A brain dead patient can have his heart, two kidneys, two lungs, liver, pancreas, and small bowel reused by patients with organ failure, whose lives can be saved. The fact that out of 52 organ donations this year, 41 are from medico-legal cases and only 11 are from non-medico legal cases reiterates the reality that majority of organ donations happen from accident victims.
"When there is no space to treat the living, how can we maintain the dead? Organ retrieval centres require neurologists, anaesthetists, physicians and a medical superintendent apart from Operation Theatre space and an Intensive Care Unit. We already have a lot of vacancies for our specialists' posts. We need additional human resource for organ retrieval and money for their salaries," Prabhakar added.
The Non-Transplant Human Organ Retrieval Centre (NTHORC) proposal was first made in August 2017 during former Health Minister KR Ramesh Kumar's tenure. Despite the health department receiving Rs 495 crore additional budget — up from Rs 8,822 crore of former CM Siddaramaiah's budget — this proposal finds no mention.
"A grant of Rs 30 crore will be earmarked for transplantation of heart, kidney, liver etc., for poor patients," announced HD Kumaraswamy in his budget speech."This announcement has nothing to do with grants for this project, this money is to be given individually to patients getting transplants done, for their medical expenses," Prabhakar said.
Dr Kishore Phadke, convener, Jeevasarthakathe, the state transplant body, said, "We have had 52 donations in seven months so far already. Last year, for the entire year, we had 70 donations, so the number has definitely gone up. Lot of multi-organ donations are also taking place and transplant activity is happening in other parts of the state too apart from Bengaluru.""But we need more transplant coordinators. At present we have only five and we need more hospitals to apply to become organ retrieval centres. District hospitals have tremendous potential and so does NIMHANS. This will boost organ donation in Karnataka," he added.
Organ donation rate per million population is less than one in Karnataka. NIMHANS Director Dr BN Gangadhar and Health Secretary Ajay Seth were unavailable for comment.
