Organ donations in Tamil Nadu drop by 12% in one year

CHENNAI: On Monday, as the state health minister boasted about how Tamil Nadu has secured awards for organ donation consecutively for four year, the statistics published by Transtan, a body that coordinates cadaver organ donations, shows the number is dipping.

Until now, 1,282 people have donated 7,468 organs, health minister C Vijaya Baskar said at a function organised for the organ donation week at the Stanley Medical College Hospital. “In the last four years, we have received the best performer award from the Centre in organ donations,” he added. He was accompanied by fisheries minister D Jayakumar.
But transplant surgeons, counsellors, activists and patient groups, weren’t happy. “The number of organ donations is coming down across the state. We have to do something about it soon,” said Mohan foundation founder Dr Sunil Shroff.
Statistics shows there is a 12% decline in the number of donations between 2017 and 2018. From 160 donors, the numbers came down to 140 in 2018. Transtan hasn’t published the data for 2019, but Mohan Foundation, which sources data from Tamil Nadu Network for Organ Sharing, says there were 66 donations this year until June 16.
One of the reasons is that the number of donations from government hospitals – which has the largest number of admissions for road traffic accidents – has not improved substantially and the number of donations made at private hospitals has come down. Many medical college hospitals and district headquarters hospitals do not even register brain deaths. Government hospitals contribute organs from less than 30 donors a year. Among private hospitals the number of donations came down to 113 in 2018 from 158 in 2016.
Grief counsellors say it is difficult for them to convince families to donate. A series of goof ups by government agencies and media reports destroyed patients’ trust. “A poor patient was moved from a government hospital in a district to a private hospital so his organs could be harvested for a VIP. When we talk about donations, donor families still ask us if there is a VIP waiting somewhere,” said a senior counsellor working for a government hospital.
Transplant surgeons say that altruism comes down when people lose trust in the system. “We have one of the largest registry of people who have pledged their organs but for the first time in many years, we have at least four people a week requesting withdrawal,” said Shroff.
Health minister says the government has been doing best to ensure poor patients get equal share of the organs from the pool. “A heart harvested from a brain-dead patient at private hospital in Chennai was used in a patient at our multi-specialty hospital in Omandurar. Some time ago, there was a criticism that a large share of the organs were given away to international patients. We have refuted the argument at several forums,” Vijaya Baskar said.
Senior health department officials said the state has done well in judicial use of organ. For instance, although internationally the utilization is only 25-30%, statistics show utilization in Tamil Nadu is 68%. Of the 66 donations the state received between January and June 16, 44 hearts were used. Similarly, the lung utilization in the state is 34% compared to international standards of 20-25%.