Hospital should have alerted ZTCC

Mumbai: The Directorate of Health Services (DHS) said that the Hiranandani Hospital’s license for conducting organ transplants/organ harvesting had been cancelled last year since the hospital was allegedly involved in a kidney racket and therefore the management should have alerted the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC) to get the organs of a brain-dead patient, who died on Wednesday at the hospital, harvested elsewhere.

DHS had not permitted the brain-dead patient’s organ harvesting on the grounds that Powai-based Hiranandani Hospital’s license for conducting organ transplants last August.  The license was revoked after the Powai police busted an alleged kidney-transplant racket and arrested five hospital doctors.    

Swapnil Raut, a person in the waiting list of the ZTCC has approached the Bombay high court, seeking directions to the state and the ZTCC to co-ordinate for harvesting the organs of a brain dead person in Hiranandani Hospital as the relatives of the patient have agreed to donate his organs. The petitioner had prayed that the state and Directorate of Medical Education Research should make haste in harvesting the organs through a team of doctors assigned by them as Hiranandani Hospital’s right to harvest and transplant organs has been cancelled. Any delay in harvesting the organs would result in wastage of the organs and loss to the patients in the ZTCC waiting list, according to the petition.

The ZTCC does Organ Distribution as per the state priority criteria.