Mumbai: Tier 2 cities have, for the first time, made significant contributions to the State’s organ donation pool, which has set a record of 120 cadaver donations so far this year. With 14 such contributions, new entrants to the cadaver donation programme were Aurangabad, Nanded, Kolhapur and Nashik.
Pune, too, has almost caught up with Mumbai with 47 cadaver donations this year, compared to Mumbai’s 52. The city had contributed eight cadavers in 2014 and 16 in 2015. The encouraging trend set by Maharashtra was acknowledged by the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) on Wednesday, and stood second in cadaver donations after Tamil Nadu.
This year, as many as seven cadavers came from Aurangabad, two from Nanded, one from Kolhapur and four from Nashik. Dr Sujata Patwardhan, head, Urology Department, KEM Hospital, who formerly headed the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC), Mumbai, said, “In the past, figures from Mumbai and Pune represented all of Maharashtra to a certain extent. This is the first time that we have cadaver organs from other cities contributing to the statistics. Maharashtra has conducted several activities to increase the numbers of organ transplants.”
For the Marathwada region, the new ZTCC at Aurangabad led to a major boost to the organ transplant programme. Plans to start the ZTCC were in the pipeline since 2011, but were implemented only in January this year. Dr. Sudhir Kulkarni, president. ZTCC, Aurangabad, said, “Our aggressive public awareness campaigns and workshops began some years ago, which led to wider awareness about the topic. Before this, many were unaware of the concept of cadaver donation.”
This ZTCC now has a waiting list of 140 patients for kidneys. Of the seven cadaver donations in Aurangabad and two in Nanded, three have taken place in the State-run hospitals. Though the State government has been pushing organ donations, public hospitals have been at the bottom of the list to identify brain dead patients, get cadaver donors and retrieve organs.
“We have kept out primary focus on the government-run hospitals as they get a large number of patients,” said Dr. Kulkarni. Roughly, about five per cent of deaths in Intensive Care Units are brainstem deaths. Of these, a few could be fit for cadaver organ donations if the hospital has a robust system of social workers and counsellors getting on the job of talking to the patient’s kin.
The ZTCC in Nagpur, established in 2013, is also picking up gradually. From one cadaver in 2013, three in 2014 and four in 2015, it had jumped to five cadavers this year. The Pune ZTCC, covering Nashik, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Dhule and Solapur, has performed well. “Many hospitals in Pune like Deenanath Mangeshkar, Ruby Hall and Sahyadri developed a very good system of identifying brain dead patients and counselling relatives. These efforts led to the sudden increase in the cadaver donation numbers,” Arati Gokhale, coordinator, Pune ZTCC, said. “There is now certain level of awareness among the people as well. Very often relatives offer the organs on their own,” she added.
