The number of cadaver organ transplants has not picked up in Calcutta as expected by doctors and state health department officials, and they blame it on a combination of factors.
The factors include inability to extend the geographical radius to create a pool of donors, government medical colleges not doing enough to make relatives of brain-dead patients aware of organ donation and general lack of will and awareness among a section of private hospitals.
In Calcutta, in the last one year, eight heart transplants have taken place in several hospitals that were given licence for the surgery.
In comparison, one hospital in Mumbai had done about 25 transplants, said doctors and officials involved in the cadaver transplant programme across India. In Chennai, there are hospitals which do 30-odd heart transplants a year, they said.
Doctors said till 2014 there were less than 20 heart transplants per year in India but since then there had been a steady increase because of coordinated activity. Now in India there are about 350 heart transplants taking place in a year.
“If the cadaver transplant programme, be it for heart or other organs, has to succeed in Calcutta, then we need a larger area to get donors. The problem here is we look for donors in a small area. The pool should be increased to entire eastern India,” said cardiac surgeon Kunal Sarkar.
“In south India, the registry of recipients is maintained in a state-wise manner, but they keep a vigil across all southern states. The coordination is through the region,” Sarkar said.
Several hospitals in Calcutta have a list of probable recipients of heart who are suffering from critical cardiac ailments. But officials of most hospitals said they were not expanding the list of probable recipients because of lack of donors.
Fortis hospital, where a 44-year-old woman underwent heart transplant early on Wednesday, has a list of about 15 patients requiring similar transplant. Medica Superspecialty has almost the same.
“We are not enlisting more patients because there are hardly any brain-dead patients from whom the heart can be harvested,” said an official of one of the hospitals.
The other reason doctors say is the lack of initiative and awareness among their counterparts and officials at government hospitals in Calcutta.
“The highest number of road accident and trauma patients are taken to the government medical colleges. It’s a fact that the doctors at these hospitals are under pressure because of the huge number of patients they have to treat everyday. So, they don’t have time to counsel the family members of brain-dead patients to donate organs,” said a doctor of a private hospital.
State health department officials said there was also lack of concerted effort on part of a section of private healthcare units in declaring brain deaths.
Private hospitals do not go the extra mile as they are weary about the reaction of relatives, said a CEO of a corporate healthcare unit.
Recently, the health department officials had held meeting with private hospitals to raise awareness about cadaver donors.
“We are trying to raise awareness,” said an official of Swasthya Bhavan.