Soon, new rules for organ donations

In light of the kidney transplant scam that was recently detected by the Mumbai police, the state health department will unveil a fresh set of measures to rule out any foul play in organ donations, especially in cases where the donor is the wife of the recipient.

The new verification system will be incorporated in the standard operating procedure (SOP), said a health department source. On Thursday, while talking to The Asian Age, state health minister Dr Deepak Sawant said “There would be a new set of verification measures, especially when a wife is donating her kidney to her husband.” He added, “The measures seek to verify if the wife is facing any sort of pressure or is being exploited for the extraction of the kidney.”

The health minister said: “The donor and the recipient will have to sign a declaration form. The records will be video-recorded, and the data kept with the health department. There will be regular follow-ups in this regard and detailed health check-ups of the donor will be conducted for the next two years.”

The minister said both the donor and recipient would be linked via their Aadhaar cards, which would help officials confirm their identities. “More importantly, it will help prevent fake donors from selling kidneys for commercial gains,” said Dr Sawant. Procedures like DNA testing and matching will be used to ascertain the identity of the donor and recipient to rule out the possibility of fake donors coming forward and fudging documents related to the proposed transplant, he said.

The minister also said that there were some discrepancies in the Organ Transplant Act of 1994 and the measures that are to be included in the SOP could help in streamlining the whole process.

Furthermore, workshops and training will also be organised for doctors and transplant co-ordinators, which will help them understand the various processes involved in kidney transplants, and they will also be ranked on the basis of their performance. Also, advertisements will be displayed outside the ICU wards in hospitals to spur people into donating organs, especially those of brain-dead patients.