Organ Transplant to be legalised: Incentive and other benefits for the donor

After surfacing of multi crore kidney rackets in which many labourers sold their kidney in lure of money and job, government has came with an offer which will give organ transplantation a legal touch by March 2008.

India where millions of people die due to organ failure and acute shortage of donor expose many people to this illegal trade where people are ready to give up anything to save their loved ones.

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Earlier a high powered committee was formed to review organ transplantation; the committee submitted its report long back in 2004. Now again the government has taken up the issue and has announced a national programme for organ transplantation. Under this programme every legal donation will be tagged with incentives. A person will be able to donate after he or she will be declared brain dead. The other benefits include life and health insurance cover, discounts in train travel and preferred status in organ transplant waiting list to the wife, children and parents of the donor.

Anbumani Ramadoss said, “These recommendations will encourage voluntary organ donations from the families of people who have been declared brain dead.”

“We will amend the Organ Transplant Law to make the norms more donor and recipient friendly,” he added.

Under this law the organ transplant can be carried out only in hospitals that are registered with government while live transplant can be done only from father, mother, brother, sister, children or spouses.

Any other organ donation including dead body and altruistic donation will have to under go screening by authorisation committee to ensure that the donor is not forced or lured.

Government also planned to open Organ Retrieval and Banking Organisation (ORBO) in all metros Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai this year, and followed by Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Lucknow. ORBO centres will monitor the storage and retrieval of organ across the registered hospital.

The recent surfacing of black trade also brought a major question where the clients were mainly from out side India and hence the law must also cover illegal organ trade to other countries.

Awareness among people to donate the organs like kidney, heart, cornea, bone and skin hold as much importance as the law itself.