VIJAYAWADA: Six new State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisations (SOTTO) will be established soon in six States of India for networking, advocacy and biometric identification about organ donors, retrieval and transplantations across the country, New Delhi-based National Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organisation (NOTTO) director Vimal Bhandari announced at the national symposium on organ donations here on Sunday.
Another proposal suggested at the symposium includes the establishment of new Hand Transplant Centre at the Guntur Government General Hospital. “This project would be completed by 2017 after necessary approvals come in,” Chief Transplant Coordinator for Jeevandan Scheme and director for Research and development of Dr NTR University, G Krishnamurthy, announced.
Subramania Iyer, professor and HoD of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Kochi-based Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), and senior hand transplant surgeon, who established the country’s first hand transplant centre in Kerala, said that hand transplant was more difficult than any other organ transplantation. He noted that a hand has 40 structures to identify the match to connect donor’s hand to the recipient while performing surgery. According to Iyer, “India is abysmally low in organ donations and the main obstacle is to get consent from the family members of donors.”
At the symposium, Vimal Bhandari gave a presentation to emphasise the importance of developing SOTTOs. He mentioned that few States like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have already come forward to set up the centres at Jaipur, Bhopal and Indore and he was hopeful that Andhra Pradesh too would come forward. He also mentioned that all authorised institutions for organ retrieval and transplant across the country must share their data regarding the cadaver surgeries, transplants, waiting list of people for organs by coming under one national institution like NOTTO.
Bhandari revealed that around 50,000 patients were looking for kidneys and hearts, while another 50,000 were waiting for liver. But, the availability is not more than 7,000 organs altogether. “There is a poor awareness among rural people as compared to urban population. To overcome this, there is a need for huge awareness with proper coordination among States under association with one national institution,” he said.
Concluding the symposium, Krishnamurthy suggested to Bhandari that it would be good to take back the proposal for providing extra incentives and benefits to surgeons performing organ retrieval and transplants when no benefit was delivered to donors or family members of cadavers. Krishnamurthy also noted that donating organ is altruistic. In 2015, around 5 lakh road accidents occurred in India and around 1.5 lakh were identified as potential organ donors as they were declared brain-dead. “But, due to improper mechanisms, many organs are being wasted,” Krishnamurthy said.
Before the commencement of the symposium, a rally was organised by Dr NTR University of Health Sciences in Vijayawada, in association with Mukhi Media, with a theme ‘Leave a Legacy of Life’ to create awareness among public about organ donations.