Facing a Crisis

Organ transplantation has always been a critical issue in India, making India a lucrative market for organ trade. There is an acute need to raise awareness about organ donation
By Abhigyan

Transplantations of one organ from one human being to another has always been a rigorous process which needs critical care. For instance, a heart which is donated must be transplanted within four hours after removal from the donor. For a successful transplantation, a team effort is required by doctors; if one person in the team is not cooperating then it is very difficult to transplant any organ successfully.
Transplantation over the past few decades has gradually become the accepted treatment for a number of conditions where organs like the kidneys, heart and liver have irreversibly failed. For a patient with kidney failure an alternative such as dialysis is available till an organ becomes available, but for a patient with liver or heart failure; the only hope of living may be to have an immediate transplant. Organ donation is a gracious act; it reaffirms our faith in humanity.
In the last 12 years, there has been great advancement in the field of organ transplantation in India. People are discussing or talking about the problem of donating organs. Now in our country organs have been donated and transplanted from one patient who is brain dead. The Government is organizing awareness programs to encourage people for donating their organs. A fortnight program was recently organized by the government in order to create mass public awareness and make people pledge their eyes for donation. The Government promotes awareness programmes for organ donation on both electronic and print media and electronic media. Organ Retrieval and Banking Organisation promotes organ donation at the level of colleges, societies and other forum. This makes way for slow and steady changes in urban areas but not so much in rural areas.
A successful transplantation of heart requires a fast process where heart is transplanted within four hours after the donor is dead. The process of heart transplantation starts from the doctor who is operating on the donor, police in making green corridor, driver who drives the ambulance as fast as possible to reach the hospital where heart istransplanted,and the team of doctors who are operating on the patient who receives the heart.

Statistics
• In India every year nearly:
• 500,000 people die because of non-availability of organs
• 150,000 people await a kidney transplant but only 5,000 get one
• 1,000,000 lakh people suffer from corneal blindness and await transplant nationally, only 0.08 persons in per million populations (PMP) donate, while the total population is 1.2 billion. This is incredibly small figure with respect to total population.
• According to the reports of NOTTO (National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization), 10750 kidney transplants, 3570 liver transplants and only 29 of heart transplants took place in India. Among this, 14038 transplants were living transplant, while the rest are Cadaver ones.
• 90% of people in the waiting list die without getting an organ.
Sale and purchase of organs is illegal:
Wholly throughout the world, the trade of human organs is illegal except in Iran. In India before the Transplantation of Human Organ Act in 1994, the trade in organs was legal and it made India a lucrative market for organ trade for the world, but along with it many problems emerged in the market. Due to lack of awareness the lower class people were not compensated properly for their donations, on the other hand some cases showed that the patients were actually unaware about the transplantations.

Heart Transplant:
Heart transplant is the most critical transplantation among all other transplantation of organs. Apart from the relaxation time of transplantation, its success depends on many other issues, like the state or condition of the liver, other circulatory action or even age of the receiver body. For a heart transplant, the diseased heart is removed and replaced with the donated heart. During the surgery, a mechanical pump moves blood through the body.

Liver Transplantation:
It is also known as hepatic transplantation. The diseased liver is fully or partially replaced by a healthy and donated liver. It is an option for end-stage or acute liver disease. Immunosuppressive drugs are used to lower the chance of rejection of the transplant by the body and this is the case like all other grafts. Liver transplant is tagged with a controversy where the alcoholic patients get a transplant in order to fight the alcoholic cirrhosis, while other non-alcoholic patients may be considered as more deserving of that transplant.
Eye transplantation:
In eye transplantation, the cornea part of the eye is transplanted, therefore, it is also called corneal transplantation. Cornea is the transparent part of the eye. The cornea rejection in the patient’s eye can occur at any time after the transplantation, even after decades because of several causes.

Intestine Transplantation:
It is one of the rarest types of transplantations due to the high rate of rejection by the receiving body. Due to the improvements in immunosuppressive regiments, it is done on a more frequent basis. Though the options for treatment of the intestine are many, but in some critical cases the transplantation is the only options.

Pancreas Transplantation:
Pancreas is one of the vital organs in our body as it regulates the sugar level in our body. Therefore, generally a diabetic patient goes for pancreas transplantation. It can also be partially replaced as in the case of liver.