The State government’s deceased donor organ donation programme, Mrithasanjeevani, has got yet another fillip with the Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, setting up the first Cross-match and Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) lab in the public sector in the State, for performing tissue matching and antibody production tests, a crucial pre-requisite before most organ transplants can be performed.
The lab, set up for about Rs.1 crore, is the first such facility in the government sector in the entire South India.
HLA matching or histocompatibility (tissue typing) between an organ donor and recipient is necessary to select the best donor for a transplant patient. HLA are proteins that are located on the surface of white blood cells and tissues in the body. When the HLA types of a donor match that of a potential recipient, it means that their tissues are immunologically compatible.
Expensive tests
Cross-match is a sensitive lab test done before transplant, to check if the recipient’s blood will develop antibodies to the donor’s cells and thus reject the transplanted organ. HLA typing is important for all organ transplants, except liver, for which blood type and liver size compatibility will suffice.
Till now, almost all hospitals were depending on a single private hospital in Kochi for performing these expensive tests. Cross-matching costs about Rs.3,500, while HLA typing costs about Rs.20,000 or more.
Costs aside, much time used to be lost in sending the organ recipient candidates from south zone to Kochi for the tests and in deciding the person best suited for receiving the transplant. This delay of over 10 to 15 hours delayed the transplant procedure, resulting in further delays in releasing the brain dead donor’s body to the relatives
Databank
The Kerala Network for Organ Sharing (KNOS) hopes that in time, they will be able to do HLA typing of all persons who have been registered as potential organ recipients with them and store the data, so that as soon as a brain death occurs, the best possible recipient for receiving the organ can be easily identified.
KNOS will offer both tissue typing and cross-match tests at a much subsidised rates now or possibly free of cost in the near future.
