Deceased donation transplamtation in india is now gradually moving forward. In the last two years we have seen the doubling of the decesased donation rate from 196 donors in 2012 or 0.16per million population to 411 in 2014 or 0.34 pmp.The figures may not look impressive enough, but when you consider that these figures are of only 10 states and union territories  of india and the donations resulted in 1150 solid organs like kidney,liver,heart,lung,pancreas and intestine it does become significant. Rather than looking at the national avarege, it may be better to look at the state wise figures and many states have crossed 1 or 2 donations per million population. It also means that deceased donation transplantation is now responsible for almost 40% of the liver transplants done in the country and over 15% of kidney transplants. 

The few states that have led the way forward include tamil nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Puducherry, Delhi-NCR and Chandigarh.

Deceased Multi – Organ Donation in India - 2014

The factors that have been responsible for this increase in the numbers are follows-

1. Support of the media in promoting the cause
2. Increase in number of hospitals/centres doing transplantation especially liver.
3. Increase in number of trained transplant coordinators in the programme
4. State Government’s proactive role in the programme in some of the states.
5. Cooperation between public and private hospitals in the states that have done well
6. Specialist Intensive care doctors who have been supportive of the programme.
7. Awareness among the public and their support towards the programme.
8. Role of NGO’s like MOHAN Foundation in helping with capacity building and creating awareness among the public and in hospitals

Tamil Nadu has continued to contribute substantially to the number of deceased donors and is the only state where the second tier cities like Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy, Vellore, Salem and Tirunelveli have had deceased donors. This speaks highly not only about the programme, but also the availability of advanced medical facility in the state.

The last advanced transplant coordinators conference in Chennai conducted by MOHAN Foundation was attended by many senior coordinators from across country. When they were quizzed about where the challenge lay in the deceased donation programme in our country, most said it was in the hospital domain and not among the public. They believed that when a trained co-ordinator spoke to the family along with the doctor from ICU, in many instances the initial ‘No’ for donation was converted to ‘Yes’. This fact is important for the hospital authorities to understand, if they wish to take this programme forward.

MOHAN Foundation has for long believed that lack of awareness among the public is NOT the reason why the programme has not taken off in India, it is more to do with the lack of co-ordinated effort by our medical fraternity and the licensed hospitals.