The Hindu : Front Page : Organ retrieval banks coming up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Oct 28, 2007
ePaper

Front Page

Front Page

Organ retrieval banks coming up

Special Correspondent

The centres planned in 10 cities will recover organs from brain dead patients

First centre to come up in three-four months
Each centre to cost Rs. 10-15 crore

CHENNAI: A country-wide network of nodal centres to retrieve organs from brain dead patients will be started in the next three to four months, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said on Saturday.

The nodal centres, termed Organ Retrieval Bank Organisations (ORBOs), would be started in 10 cities, including Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Bhopal and Guwahati, to serve as a central organ registry and retrieval centre. The first of the centres would come up in the next three-four months. They would be set up under the National Organ Transplantation Programme at the cost of Rs. 10-15 crore per centre.

Hospitals are supposed to communicate information about brain dead patients to the nearest ORBO Centre, which will send grief counsellors to talk to the patient’s family. Once the family expresses consent, the process of organ retrieval is started by the centre to facilitate appropriate transplantation of organs. This will form part of the government’s efforts to promote cadaveric organ donation. “Currently, only 0.1 per cent of our transplantations are cadaveric. We have a long way to go,” he said.

Dr. Anbumani announced that amendments to the Transplantation of Human Organs Act would be placed before Parliament during the budget session. For a year now, the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation has been entrusted with the responsibility of making the recommendations to amend the TOHO Act in an effort to strengthen its implementation and make it transparent. One of the recommendations is to provide incentives to family members of cadaver donors – awards and free railway passes. Responding to questions from mediapersons, Dr. Anbumani said a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Sambasiva Rao had been constituted to inquire into the students’ protests against the proposal to make a year’s service mandatory in a PHC. This committee would tour 20 cities. Grievances should be conveyed to the committee. Over 28,000 doctors’ positions exist in over 23,000 PHCs. However, only 16,000 to 17,000 doctors were actually serving in rural areas, he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page