With 70% of India's 1.4 lakh accident victims diagnosed as brain dead every year, the country has 80,000 potential organ donors. Yet, organs from only about 100 are retrieved, making the percentage of cadaver donations a dismal 0.3%.
With many new hospitals having applied for organ transplant licence in the State, the Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka (ZCCK) for the first time held an intensive training module for organ transplant coordinators of licensed hospitals.
Every year, close to six lakh people die in India due to organ failure. However, according to doctors, this astonishing figure can come down drastically if awareness is generated about organ donation.
Cadaver organ transplants in the state seem to have lost a bit of steam. Even though TN has crossed the 500 donors mark, 217 of them from the government general hospital in Chennai alone, the past few months have been very slow, lament officials.
Additional Director General, Department of Health and Family Welfare, N.K. Mohanty said there is a large gap between the number of people who needed organ transplantations and the number of transplantations performed.
The nation's target will be to attain Tamil Nadu' s rate of cadaveric organ donation of 1.3 per million people within the next two years, Director General of Health Services, Government of India, R.K. Srivastava, said here on Saturday.
About one and a half lakh Indians are waiting for kidney donors. Those waiting for liver and pancreas are 60,000 and 30,000 in numbers, respectively. Intimidating though the numbers may be, the good news is that in the coming days organ transplant co-ordinators will be working actively in hospitals
A system to alert patients requiring organ donation directly through SMS alerts is being contemplated in the State. Such a system would be of great benefit as India was next only to China in mobile phone density, according to J. Amalorpavanathan, Transplant Coordinator, Cadaver Transplant Programme, Government of Tamil Nadu.
Medical personnel must liaise closely with the police department regarding organ transplantation as they could provide immense help, said J. Amalorpavanathan, Transplant Coordinator, Cadaver Transplant Programme, Government of Tamil Nadu.
Tamil Nadu is a role model for other states in organ donations, according to an expert in cadaver transplantation.
