THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Health experts have categorically ruled out illegal organ trade in the Elanthoor murders in which two women were sacrificed in black magic by a trio for prosperity. Reports that vital organs of the sacrificed women were missing had sparked rumours of organ trade. The statement by the police that they suspected it too added fuel to the fire.
However, experts said the technical and procedural complexities of organ transplantation do not fit with the police’s version of missing organs. One cannot harvest a random person’s organs with technical precision and hand it to a buyer in a sterile condition, they said. But the damage has been done,said the experts. The conspiracytheory, coming at a time when Kerala has made great strides in organ transplantation, has created doubts about the procedure in people and will affect the programme in the state, they rued.
“Organ transplantation is one of the most advanced treatment mechanisms in modern medicine that gives people suffering from organ failure a lease of life. That some lay persons can mimic its procedures and freeze the organs for buyers should be treated as a joke,” said Dr Noble Gracious, executive director of Kerala State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTO).
However, he said people’s reactions in social media proved that a lot of them believed the absurd conspiracy. “I got messages from colleagues abroad wondering why such rumours spread in a literate state like Kerala,” he said. He said people’s misunderstanding of the process affects the entire organ transplantation programme.The success of organ transplantations in Kerala can be attributed to a handful of highly-trained doctors working in select centres in public and private sectors.
‘Rumours will create fear in donors, recipients making them skip surgery’
Organs are harvested from brain dead or living patients in sterile operation theatres by doctors through precision cuts. They are placed in preserving solutions before being transplanted. All this happens within a specific time-frame. “If they believe in the rumours, both live donors and recipients will become afraid. They will start believing that this is how organs are extracted and may refuse to undergo the surgery,” Dr Noble said.
Dr N M Arun, an internal medicine specialist and public health activist, said organ trade conspiracies have been circulating in society for long. “We cannot extract organs from a random donor. The organ is valuable only when it is harvested properly and transplanted to a suitable recipient within a specific time,” he said. Dr Arun said there have been reports from other states about financially-distressed people getting conned or being influenced with money to become live donors. “However, even that harvesting is done in a proper operation theatre, not inside a house in a village,” said Dr Arun.
Registered as a society under the Travancore-Cochin Literary and Scientific Charitable Societies Registration Act, SOTO is established under the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 to regulate removal, storage and transplantation of human organs and tissues and prevent commercial transactions in connection with the treatment.