VISAKHAPATNAM: Though the management of the Seven Hills Hospitals on Tuesday claimed to have followed standard procedures during the kidney transplantation surgery which led to the arrest of their medical director Dr N Prabhakar Babu in connection with a kidney racket case in Odisha, there seem to be many lapses on their part.
The hospital neither has an in-house committee to approve the transplantations nor did it insist on a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the Odisha government which is said to be mandatory to perform an organ transplantation outside the domicile state of the donor and the recipient.
As per law, the potential donor and recipient have to submit documents of their identity, nativity and residence proof to the authorisation committee of the area for verification and approval - for Visakhapatnam the committee is headed by the KGH superintendent and consists of some doctors and non-medical professionals.
In this case, the stipulation had been bypassed by showing the donor and the recipient as wife and husband by submitting fake documents. Still, hospital’s in-house authorisation committee’s approval was required, which the hospital didn’t seem to have taken.
“Even in case the donor and the recipient are related, the authorisation committee of the hospital concerned has to approve it,” said an official in the Andhra Pradesh Directorate of Medical Education. In fact, the hospital authorities admitted that they do not have an in-house committee. “According to our knowledge, a hospital committee is not required in case of a relative donating the organ. The Transplantation Act does not insist on it,” said Dr Kuchela Babu, one of the hospital directors.
Further, as both the recipient and the donor belong to Odisha, the hospital authorities should have obtained an NOC from the Odisha government for the transplantation being done outside their state, but they didn’t seem to have done this too. “The hospital authorities were duty-bound to insist on NOC from the state government concerned but they did not follow the norms.
Instead of the in-house hospital committee, Dr N Prabhakar Babu as the medical director authorised the transplantations which is against the norms,” said a senior officer of the Odisha police who is associatied with the kidney racket case.The Odisha police are waiting for the arrival of Prabhakar Babu in Cuttack for further investigation into the case.
They said that Sharmishta Naik and her husband Dilip Naik, who lured Namita to donate her kidney, were involved in a similar case of organ transplantation at New Delhi. Parallel investigations are being conducted into all the cases.