Only 6 deceased organ donations in city public hospitals since 2017

Jyoti Shelar

MUMBAI: Since 2017, public hospitals in the city have carried out only six deceased organ donations, reveals data from the Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC). A negligible contribution, despite the heavy patient footfall in these facilities. In all, the organs of 260 people were donated in the city during this period, of which, the majority of 254 donations were carried out in private hospitals.

Deceased organ donations are carried out after family members of brain-dead patients give their consent to retrieve the organs. Hospitals need active intensive care teams and transplant coordinators to initiate the first steps such as identifying brain deaths and counselling the families. Public hospitals have been lagging on this front resulting in few donations.

“Mumbai’s public hospitals have tremendous potential for organ donations,” said Dr Bharat Shah, general secretary, Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC). “Public hospitals see many cases of road traffic accidents, trauma and other ailments wherein the patients suffer from brain stem injuries.

However, they lag in identifying the brain deaths and initiating the conversations for the donations,” he said, adding that hospitals with active intensive care teams and dedicated, welltrained transplant coordinators have better performing organ donation programmes.

According to Shah, the city has around 40 registered organ transplant centres, including four public hospitals. “If we just take the private centres into consideration, only about five to six are most active in donations, while the rest are lagging behind,” he said. “Most centres are not identifying brain deaths and not reporting them either,” he added.

The Maharashtra government has formed a state-level organ donation task force to pull up the programme from the jolt of the pandemic when the donations and transplants came to a complete halt.