Organ donations, which has one of the poorest donation records in the world, may get a shot in the arm with a proposed amendment in the concerned law.

The government is considering relaxing the law governing organ and tissue donations in India, to consider step-parents and step-siblings as “near relatives” too.

The provisions for living organ donations, which are very stringent, have proved to be a hindrance in cases where live tissue is required for transplantation. According to the existing law, only one’s spouse, biological children, biological parents, or immediate siblings, grandparents or grandchildren are considered to be near relatives — making the pool of potential donors of live organs small.

The government is now proposing to expand this list to include step-parents, step-siblings, step-children and one’s children’s and step-children’s spouses as “near relatives”. Not just that, even the siblings of the recipient’s spouse or parents, and their first cousins are being considered as “near-relatives”, according to the amendments.

“This Ministry has been receiving a number of grievances concerning to the ‘Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994’ of which majority are requests for organs due to non-availability of near relative donor or blood group mismatch with near relative,” the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare noted in an explanatory note.

The proposed amendments have been opened to public comments until September 25.

Responding to the proposal, Vivekanand Jha, Executive Director, The George Institute for Global Health India, said: “The organ transplant programme in India is overwhelmingly dependent on altruistic donation by living individuals. We hope that this enabling provision will be supported by clear and transparent processes to confirm of such relationships with a high degree of confidence, so that this provision is not used as a loophole to indulge in the reprehensible practice of commercial transplants.”