Even the dead can save lives if ignorance is put on pyre!

Every year 90,000 vehicular accidents occur in Maharashtra. Out of this number, 15 per cent succumb to their injuries, that is 13,500 unfortunate victims. What is, however, unfortunate is that on an average, a dismal 15 cadaver kidney transplants, or diseased donor transplants are done in a year, whereas Maharashtra alone desperately needs 15,000 cadaver kidneys a year.
What is the connection? “The point is that two kidneys, one heart, one liver, pancreas, two lungs and two corneas each of the 13,500 deceased could be transplanted to give new life to organ-waiting patients, instead of consigning them to flames or burying deep underground,” says Dr Vatsala Trivedi who performed the first cadaver renal transplant on March 27, 1997. Since then she has been spearheading a movement to save many a lives through such transplants. Vehicular accidents are the most common cause of brain-death victims. An accident victim who is brain dead but has a normally beating heart can donate his organs to save the life of an unfortunate kidney failure patient.
Dr Vatsala who is the general secretary of the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC) says that the reluctance of the next of kin to donate the cadavers is an “impediment to the progress of science.” The bigger picture is still pathetic. Only 750 cadaver transplants have been done in India despite the fact that brain death has been officially recognised since 1984. According to Dr Vatsala, public sensitisation and post-death counselling must go hand in hand in order to save many precious lives, “because with the exception of the kidney and in some measure the liver, the rest of the organ transplants cannot be performed on a living person. In the case of liver transplants there is a probability of the donor’s death for they are not as safe as kidney transplants.”
When the racket of organ trading mushroomed in the southern states, the government stepped in to stem the rot with the legislation of Transplantation of Human Organs Act 1994 according to which only father, mother, brothers, sisters and spouses can share their kidneys among themselves. Before each operation, the ZTCC and the police must be informed. Only 19 leading hospitals in Mumbai are registered to do the transplants.
The general cadaver kidneys and other organs are transplanted to patients through a computerised scoring system depending upon the disease status, rather than the first-come-first-served basis, Also, it is done through an equitable, unbiased, transparent system. About 835 patients have registered for kidney transplants, and another 40 registered for liver. “Even a vice-admiral from the Indian army waited for 21 months before getting a kidney transplant and national tennis player Tarun Gupta has been waiting for the last five years while living on regular dialysis,” says Dr Vatsala.
Talking of awareness, Dr Vatsala said that in the United States, 85 per cent of transplants are cadaveric, while the figure for India is a distressing 0.2 per cent. In Spain, where the system of what they call “opting-out” is in vogue, the government considers every cadavar the state property. The individual citizen who does not want his body to be dissected after his death, can opt-out, and his “sentiments” are duly honoured by the government. But the percentage of people who opt-out are said to be very negligible.“ Spreading awareness is the need of the hour. Let each of us spread the message of organ donation and pledge our organs after death,” Dr Vatasala concludes.