The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Armed forces get serious about organ donation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 22, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Armed forces get serious about organ donation

Staff Reporter

19-member team co-ordinating counselling
Many participants at workshop pledge their organs

Bangalore: The Indian armed forces recently launched the Armed Forces Organ Retrieval and Transplant Authority (AORTA) to promote and oversee all activities related to cadaver (non-living) donor organ transplant programme.

Command Hospital, Air Force, Bangalore, is the nodal centre for AORTA for South India.

AORTA aims to increase awareness of organ donations, organ retrieval and transplantation in the armed forces and counsel families to donate the organs of their loved ones after they are declared brain dead.

Speaking at a symposium on “Organ Donation and Transplant” organised by the Command Hospital, Colonel A.K. Seth, Director, AORTA and Senior Adviser, Gastroenterology at the Army Hospital (Research and Referral), where AORTA was born, said that a 19-member liver transplant team, which was just back after training in this area, was co-ordinating all efforts for retrieval and transplant of liver by counselling families and finding eligible patients.

In his inaugural address, Air Marshal G.S. Chaudhury, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Training Command, Indian Air Force, Bangalore, said that awareness about organ donation and transplant was not much in India and there was some amount of resistance to donate organs of a brain dead person by his family.

Sudarshan Ballal, Director of the Manipal Institute of Nephrology and Urology, said the burden of kidney disease and end stage renal failure was huge and the cost of treatment was high. Cadaver transplant was grossly underutilised and it should be promoted through awareness and education programmes as it was the only hope for end stage renal failure patients.

Commissioner of Police N. Achutha Rao and former Indian cricketer Syed Kirmani were present at the symposium. Many participants pledged their organ for donation at the programme.

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