Transplant coordinator Bhavana Shah was at a restaurant in Ghatkopar having dinner with friends when her phone rang last Friday. A member from the Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC) informed her about a potential organ donor, a 25-year-old severely injured accident victim, admitted to the State-run JJ Hospital in Byculla.

Ms. Shah, who is attached to the Mumbai Central’s Wockhardt Hospital, was asked to step in to counsel the family and hand hold the doctors and staff at the hospital with the procedures. She left her dinner mid-way and went to Byculla to facilitate the organ donation. As it happened, the donation gave a new lease of life to five critically-ill patients, including a seven-month-old baby who was transplanted with a small part of the donor’s liver. It also marked the second organ donation in a public hospital this year.

“Since organ donations are not happening in public hospitals, they don’t know all the procedures and documentation,” said Ms. Shah, who counselled the family about the noble cause, the procedures involved and the time it requires. She also helped the doctors with the documentation like the family consent form, brain stem death certification and a no objection certificate.

A transplant coordinator for the past 16 years, Ms. Shah said counselling the family is one of the main tasks but they also have to be prepared for the time involved in the coordination, medical examinations, allotment and retrieval of organs.

“Relatives are under the impression that it will be a quick procedure after they give their consent. But the entire process takes a lot of time, starting from two apnea tests (a mandatory examination for determining brain death) in a gap of six hours to cross matching and coordinating with the other hospitals who have recipients on the waiting list,” she said.

What is ZTCC?

The ZTCC is a State government agency that coordinates organ-sharing between hospitals, and its member are hospitals in Mumbai and Thane that are registered to carry out transplants. The ZTCC has senior doctors at its helm and manages a list of patients on the waiting list for various organs. After the Human Organ Transplantation Act was passed in 1994 in India and Maharashtra adopted it in 1995, government officials and senior doctors thought it was important to regulate transplants at various levels. ZTCCs were proposed in four cities: Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Aurangabad. The ZTCC in Mumbai was formed in 2000.

When the organ donation programme started in 1997 (the first transplant with a cadaver kidney was carried out at Sion hospital), all donations in the first three years were from public hospitals: KEM, Sion and Nair. Thereafter, contributions from the public hospitals became rare. For example, Mumbai recorded the highest number —79 — organ donations in 2019, and all were from private hospitals. While JJ Hospital last recorded an organ donation in 2017, KEM Hospital recorded one in 2016.

The year 2020, however, started on a positive note, with KEM Hospital contributing to the pool of organs in January after the family of a 52-year-old man who had suffered from a stroke, consented to donate his organs. To facilitate the donation, the ZTCC called in Rahul Wasnik, a transplant coordinator attached to Global Hospital in Parel.

“The family had shown willingness but they had many queries. I sat them down and answered everything,” said Mr. Wasnik, who was at home in Belapur when he got the call at 8.15 p.m. on a Sunday. He was at the hospital in Parel by 10.30 p.m. “Since the paperwork and coordination was new for KEM doctors, I helped them,” said Mr. Wasnik, a transplant coordinator for the past six years.

The ZTCC is willing to provide coordinators and even train the doctors and nurses from public hospitals who show willingness to carry out organ donations. “At present, we borrow transplant coordinators from private hospitals to facilitate donations in public set-ups. Since private hospitals are a part of the programme, the process is smooth and one doesn’t have to wait for extra permissions. That’s the beauty of the system,” said Dr. S.K. Mathur, president, ZTCC.

“But if public hospitals show willingness, we can provide them with a small group of coordinators. We can also get funding for them so that the public hospitals are not burdened,” he said.

ZTCC’s former president Dr. Gustad Dave said if organ donations in public hospitals can be sustained, it is a very good sign. “So many lives can be saved with donated organs,” he said.