Only seven persons pledge to donate organ

--‘Status of organ donation very bad in India’

 
BHUBANESWAR: “Status of organ donation in India especially in Odisha is very bad,” said All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar director Dr Ashok Kumar Mahapatra on the occasion of the World Organ Donation day celebrated at the AIIMS campus here on Tuesday.

Mahapatra said that awareness, education and motivation are needed to sensitise people about the organ transplantation and body donation for a greater cause that saves lives of many people. He informed that kidney transplantation, which was started from 1971 at AIIMS, costs Rs 2.5 lakh, while it costs around Rs 1 lakh and Rs 5-10 lakh for heart and bone marrow transplantation respectively in the Government hospitals.

“Now it becomes easy and accessible to transplant organs. A person can save nearly eight persons’ lives through organ donation,” said Mohapatra, adding, “Organ can be collected from the persons who suffer brain death.”

He said that a dying patient can help the persons who need heart, lung and eyes. Even skin, bone and a few other body parts can be transplanted easily. “Due to blind belief and superstitions, organ donation has become a non-starter in the State,” he said.

Mahapatra felicitated all the seven persons for extending help to save others life by donating their valuable organs. He also said that hundreds of people in need of organ transplants cannot be saved every year because of lack of donors.

Notably, the Central Government has amended the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 (42 of 1994) to include certain changes called the Transplantation of Human Organs Rules, 1995 to streamline organ donation and transplantation activities which accepted brain death as a form of death and made the sale of organs a punishable offence.