Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader on Saturday said the government is considering relaxing some norms regarding cadaver organ donation and transplantation to bring in certain amount of flexibility to offer organs of the deceased person/ brain-dead person to the immediate kith and kin of the donor.
Interacting with presspersons here, Mr. Khader was responding to a query on an incident where a kidney of a brain-dead person in Mangaluru was denied for transplantation to an immediate relative of the donor. The Zonal Coordination Committee of Karnataka for Transplantation (ZCCK) flatly refused the request stating that the receiver had not registered for cadaver donation with the committee.
As a result, family members of the brain-dead person refused to donate organs altogether, thereby depriving many others in need of organs, the Minister was told. Had the Committee accepted the plea of family members, not only the relative, but also many who were in dire need of organs would have benefited, he was told.
Responding to this, Mr. Khader said if such pleas were accepted without any verification, it could lead to another kind of scam where organs of brain dead / dead persons could be sold in the guise of ‘relatives.’
Hence there is a need to bring such an activity within the legal framework by relaxing the existing norms. The government is working on it, he added.
