Organ Donation

Government of India has amended the Transplantation of Human Organs (Amendment) Act 1994 in 2011. Some of the important amendments under this Act to promote and facilitate donation of body parts are:-

(i)               Provision of ‘Retrieval Centers for retrieval of organs from deceased donors and their registration under the amended Act.

(ii)             Definition of near relative expanded to include Grandparents and Grand Children.

(iii)          Brain death certification Board has been simplified and more experts have been permitted.

(iv)           Inquiry and informing the family members’ regarding option to donate in case of unfortunate event of brain stem death of Patients admitted in ICU for the purpose of organ donation.

(v)             Mandatory ‘Transplant Coordinator in the Hospitals registered for organ transplant/retrieval  for encouraging the family members for deceased organ donation and coordinating all matters relating to removal or transplantation of human organs.

(vi)           Establishing a National Human Organs and Tissues Removal and Storage Network at one or more places and similar Regional and State level network.

(vii)        Maintain Registry of Donors and Recipients waiting for the transplant.

(viii)      Removal of eye has been permitted by a trained technician to facilitate eye donation.

Further, National Organ Transplant Programme(NOTP) has been approved to promote and facilitate donation of body parts from deceased donors. Following IEC Activities are carried out for creating awareness for organ donation:

1.        Indian Organ Donation Day is celebrated every year since the year 2010.

2.        A programme on Organ donation was aired through LokSabha Channel to spread awareness in the month of November 2013.

3.        Awareness activities were carried out in India International Trade fair in 2013 to spread the message of Deceased Organ Donation among the public.

4.        Regional "Organ Donation Awareness workshops" have been organized in coordination with State Governments during 2011-2012 in the cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Puducherry, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh, & Trivandrum for increasing the awareness among public for organ donation.

For establishment of a National Network Centre at Safdarjung Hospital New Delhi steps have already been initiated.

Work for establishing an online system with a dedicated website (www.notto.nic.in) has also been started for establishing network for retrieval of organs from deceased /cadaver donors and their allocation and distribution in a transparent manner.

Health being a state subject, it is for the respective State/Union Territory to develop a repository of body parts for donation.   However, as approved under NOTP for 12^th plan, the process for setting up a National level Bio-Material Centre has already been initiated at Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi for which construction work has been completed.

The Health Minister stated this in a written reply in the RajyaSabha here today.

Courtesy : pib.nic.in