One of the recent beneficiaries of the cadaver transplant programme has been the liver transplant programme. In the last 4 to 5 years almost 4 to 5 units have emerged as leaders in this programme. In the last 4 to 5 years almost four units have emerged as leaders in this programme. These include Apollo Indraprastha Hospital and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in N.Delhi, Global Hospitals – Hyderabad and CMC Hospital – Vellore. All these hospitals have done both living and cadaver transplants and are performing them regularly. Interestingly the hospitals in Hyderabad and Vellore have mostly used cadaver organs whereas the hospitals in Delhi have depended on living liver donations.

The success with the cadaver livers has been due to the stronger networking and existence of local sharing network for organs in the southern states. In more than seven instances livers have been flown to Delhi and Hyderabad from Chennai and Vellore. In some instances the local team has retrieved the organ and transported it to another city. In Hyderabad, a patient who was located in Thiruvananthapuram flew to Hyderabad and the surgeon who had the patient on the waiting list from Delhi flew into Hyderabad to do the transplant surgery with the local team. These are the best examples of networking that has resulted in the use of the very precious cadaver resources that become available in the country sporadically. The key has been to try and not waste these resources as and when they become available.

What is now required is a nationwide organ sharing network. In this respect a computerized registry is already in place and the Tamil Nadu example is easily scalable and can be duplicated at the national level. The demo version of the registry is available for free viewing on www.mohanfoundation.org/inos. The INOS (Indian Network for Organ Sharing) was launched about four years back in Chennai by MOHAN Foundation.

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