Out of the 1,128 cadaveric donations in the country in 2024, only 14 were from Bengal, a talk by the head of the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) at an awareness meet in the city on Friday
revealed.
Anil Kumar, NOTTO’s director, later told Metro that the country has come far in terms of cadaveric organ donation, but there is still scope for improvement.
Several doctors in Bengal had earlier flagged the low cadaveric donation in the
state.
On Friday, Kumar urged government hospitals where transplant surgeries
are taking place to act as mentor and motivate other state-run hospitals to become donor centres where organs of brain dead persons can be retrieved.
The recovered organs can be transported to the other hospital for transplant surgeries. He was speaking at an organ donation summit organised by Manipal Hospitals.
In Bengal, SSKM Hospital is the state-run hospital where most transplant surgeries take place.
The organisation officials said if SSKM Hospital became the hub for transplant surgeries and managed to motivate other state-run hospitals, at least the medical colleges that have good infrastructure, the number of cadaveric donations can go up.
Once the retrieval centres get running, they may feel motivated to upgrade to a transplant centre.
“This is what Tamil Nadu (the state with the maximum number of cadaveric donors in 2024) has done. It has been able to create many donor hubs. Retrieval of the organs is a comparatively easier task than the transplant surgeries and can be done in many hospitals with adequate infrastructure,” said an official of the organisation.
With 268 donors, Tamil Nadu was at the top of cadaveric donors list in 2024.
Telangana was second with 188 donors and Maharashtra was third with 172
donors.
Director Kumar said states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have the historical advantage of starting early.
“The cadaveric donation programme started in around 2000 in Tamil Nadu and
Maharashtra. In many other states, like in Bengal, it started in the mid-2010s with the setting up of the Regional
Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisations (ROTTOs),” Kumar told the newspaper on Sunday.
“In Tamil Nadu, the authorities have successfully set up the hub-and-spoke
model. They have many retrieval centres that are not doing transplants but where organ retrievals happen,” said Kumar.
An official of ROTTO (East), said 16 cadaveric donations have taken place in Bengal so far this year.
Though the number is more than what happened last year, there was scope for improvement, the official said.
A cadaveric organ harvest can only be done from a “brain-dead” person.
Kumar said families of people who died from road accidents or suffered strokes can be counselled to donate their organs.
Across the country, there is still a huge mismatch between the demand and supply of organs.
Many patients die while waiting for an organ transplant. More cadaveric donations can fill this void.