Cadaveric organ donations had picked up pace in 2018. But the number of donations per year has shown a marginal rise between then and now, the director of the regional organ and tissue transplant organisation (ROTTO) said on Friday.
There were 13 organ donors in 2018 and 14 in 2024.
Manimoy Bandyopadhyay, the director of ROTTO (East), flagged it as a cause of concern.
He suggested that critical care physicians and nurses, who treat patients in the final hours before they are declared brain dead, need to be trained on how to approach the family of a brain-dead person and persuade them to agree to organ donation.
A ROTTO official said the first deceased organ donation took place in Bengal in 2012, but a more structured manner was put in place in 2017.
The deceased donations witnessed a surge in 2018, but dropped in the Covid pandemic years. The subsequent surge did not show any satisfactory growth.
There is an abundance of transplant surgeons, but the challenge is in convincing family members of the brain-dead person to donate organs in the moments when they have yet to absorb that a sudden accident has killed their dear ones.
“Deceased organ donation was in a nascent stage in Bengal before 2018. It picked up pace in 2018, but the unfortunate part is we have not seen any growth in the number of cadaveric (deceased) organ donation in Bengal between 2018 and 2024,” Bandyopadhyay said at a workshop on cadaveric organ donation at Medica Superspecialty Hospital.
“There needs to be more seminars and symposiums with critical care physicians on how to communicate the proposal of organ donation to a family that is in grief after hearing that a loved one was brain-dead and had no hope of recovering,” he said.
There is a huge mismatch between the demand and supply of organs. Many patients die while waiting for an organ transplant.
Bandyopadhyay, also the director of the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (SSKM Hospital), said reactions of most families on being told about organ donation were that the doctors were planning to sell the organs. A few months back, some doctors who had advised organ donation to a family had to flee SSKM Hospital as the relatives asked people to come and thrash the doctors, he said.
An official of the state health department said an overwhelming majority of organ donations in India per year was in south India and a few western Indian states. The scene in the rest of the country was abysmal, and Bengal was no different.
“More awareness about the benefits of organ donation can change this,” said the official.
Debansu Sarkar, the joint director of ROTTO (East) and head of urology at SSKM Hospital, said India followed an “opt-in” policy for organ donation, while many developed countries had an “opt-out” policy.
“In India, a family can decide to donate the organs, whereas in many Western developed countries, it is assumed that the family will donate organs. They have to opt out if they want to do otherwise,” he said.
An increase in the number of deceased donations can help curb organ trafficking because it will slash the requirement for live donations. It will also help potential live donors remain healthier as they do not have to part with any organ, said doctors.
On Friday, Manipal Organ Sharing & Transplant (MOST), an initiative of Manipal Hospitals, launched its eastern region chapter of Deceased Organ and Tissue Donation.