Eye Bank of India (EBI) has been lobbying for a ‘required request’ law to boost the eye donation programme in the country. At present, the EBI has 215 eye banks all over the country and retrieves on an average 16,000 corneas every year. However, there are 3 million Corneally blind people in India with 60% of them being children below the age twelve. The EBI wishes to target 150,000 corneas per day. They also have almost 115 social workers working as counselors in different hospitals in the country who ask for eyes. The quality of eyes retrieved from hospitals is much superior compared to home – retrieved corneas. Foe the past two years, the EBI along with the other social activists in the eye donation programme have been actively lobbying for an amendment in Transplant of Human Organ (THO) act that will make it compulsory for hospital staff or social workers to ask for eyes in the event of death. This “Required Request Law” is likely to give the required boost to this programme.

Compared to the eye donation programme, the solid organ cadaver donation scene in India is in an abysmal state. It is seven years since the THO Act was passed and we have not much to talk about. We done less than 450 cadaver transplants in the country (Ref: ITN 9 June 2001). This averages at about 55 transplants a year. At present, it is estimated that about 3500 related and unrelated kidney transplants are being done in India. At any given time, there are at least 10 – 12 ‘brain death’ patients languishing in different ICUs of major city in India. Potentially, we have a large pool of these donors. If a similar law is implemented for solid organs it is likely to give a boost to our flagging cadaver programme. We are sending letters to different departments and minister for including this along with some other recommendation to give the required boost to the solid organ donation programme. If you wish you could also join us in our endeavor. Please post the enclosed post card to the minister of health. Please post it as soon as possible to make this as an appeal. This collective action is our part can help us in our effort to help our cadaver transplantation programme in our country.

Recommendation being sent for inclusion and the transplant of human organs act are the following:

1)      Compulsory ‘Require Request’ law for solid organs

2)       Having a ‘Donor Card’ clause on Indian Driving Licenses.

3)      Delinking hospitals where organs can be retrieved from hospitals where they can actually be transplanted. Moving bodies from one hospital that is not approved to another that is approved, limits the scope of number of brain death patients that is made available.

4)       In Medico-Legal cases making it possible to undertake ‘Postmortem’ at the same time as organ retrieval surgery. At present, in many instances, the body is shifted from one hospital to another and this practice is emotionally very traumatic for the relatives of the donor.

5)      Having a Transplant Co-coordinator placed in different ICUs of the hospitals that are eligible to undertake cadaver organ donation and transplantation. 

None of the above provisions and inclusions is likely to cost the government any money to implement.