While the number of patients requiring hand transplants is rising in the state – four in 2018 and five more in five months of 2019 – organ donations for the limb have been static, largely due to lack of awareness.

There is hardly any cadaver donation for hand when compared to other organ donations, officials say. Nine patients from the state are on the waitlist to receive transplants since 2018. From 2013 through 2017, there were no patients on this list.

Hand transplant has been attempted only once in the state and the operation failed. In 2018, Pune's Southern Command Hospital initiated a hand transplant surgery but there were medical complications. As per the data shared by the State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO), from 2013 till May 2019, this is the only hand transplant surgery attempted.

In civic-run KEM Hospital in Parel, which is one of the three hand transplant centres across Maharashtra, only one patient is registered. "We have a patient waiting, but there is no donor," Dr Vinita Puri, head of plastic surgery at KEM and chairperson of an expert hand committee. "After the transplant, patients have to be on immunosuppressants throughout life. So they think twice about this, if it is not necessary to live."

"We need more trained surgeons for this. The number of centres in the state depends upon the number of surgeons," said Dr Astrid Lobo Gajiwala, director, ROTTO & SOTTO, western region.