GIFT A LIFE
Though the list of recipients is long, very few in India come forward to donate organs
In India, at least 10 persons die every day while waiting to get an organ for transplant. But despite acute shortage, Indians are highly selective about accepting organs or blood and that further create hurdles in promoting cadaver donation, revelas a recent study.
The two-year long, web-based anonymous study (2011-2012) conducted by the University of Michigan, US, found people would feel ‘creeped out’ and were willing to decline an organ or blood that came from a murderer or thief. The receipient felt, says the study published in journal Cognitive Science, their personality or beahviour will change into that of the donor person as a result.
“The recipients preferred to get an organ transplant, DNA transplant, or blood transfusion from a donor whose personality or behaviour matched theirs,” says Meredith Meyer, the study’s lead author and psychology research fellow.
India is already struggling to meet the organ demand for transplantation. Merely 0.3% undergo cadaver donations in the country, though more than one million people are estimated to be suffering from end-stage organ failure.
The numbers in the armed forces though are far better. Armed Forces Organ Retrieval and Transplant Authority (AORTA) gets more donations because of the better orgainsed set up.
“Being from the forces, there is a greater trust in the doctor among patients and their families,” said a doctor in the Army Research and Referral Hospital, requesting anonymity.
Since the Organ Transplantation Act came into existence about two decades ago, the country has seen a little more than 1,000 cadaver donations.
World over a protocol is followed that doesn’t allow interaction between the donor and recipient families. “It is an unnatural and unhealthy bond, therefore, best avoided. We never tell the recipient’s family who donated,” added Dr Harsha Jauhari, chairman, transplant unit, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.
“There are a lot of false notions in different communities like if eyes are retrieved, the dead won’t find a place in heaven; the person will be born without those organs that are retrieved in the next birth that people still believe in, making it difficult for our counselors to convince them,” said a senior doctor at the AIIMS Trauma Centre.
The solution, feel experts, is to make it a talking point among people. “Most of the cadaver donations that we get are from families that have discussed organ donation at some point,” said Dr Anupam Sibal, group medical director, Apollo Hospitals.