Set up committees to look into organ donation: HC

Asks State to ensure adequate publicity that can be understood by the common man

Mumbai

The Bombay High Court recently asked the State government to ensure that appropriate hospital-based authorisation committees are set up to look into organ donation. These should be constituted under the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue Act, 2014, the court said.

A Division Bench of Justices Abhay Oka and M.S. Sanklecha was hearing a 2013 petition filed by Master Siddhant Vikram Pal and others, seeking a direction for implementation of provisions of the Act. He also sought real-time data on the availability of organs.

On June 21, 2013, a mechanism to set up authorisation committees was put in place. On October 19, 2018, HC ordered that “the State will have to create if not already created a centralised data of life organ transplants undertaken by various hospitals and there must be a provision made for the real time updation of the data. On expiry of every calendar the State will have to ascertain whether 25 transplants have actually taken place in a particular hospital. In case it is found that a hospital had more than 25 transplants and a committee is not established, a committee will have to be constituted.”

On March 15, 2019, a joint affidavit was filed by principal secretary, Public Health Department, secretary of Medical Education, and Drugs Department saying four hospitals on National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation were not registered with the State authority but were doing organ transplant/organ retrieval surgeries.

The Bench recorded that the of the 321 cases sent to regional committee at Mumbai, 318 were approved. In Pune 347 cases were registered and approved.

The court said, the State must consider creating a full-time post of assistant professor in medicine and make him a member of the regional authorisation committee of Mumbai and Pune. The court said the State needs to give publicity about the existence of Regional Authorisation Committees and Hospital Level Authorisation Committees. The Bench also said that adequate publicity should be given to provisions of the said rules. in a manner that is understood by the common man. The publicity by publishing articles in newspapers, conducting programmes on FM and by giving publicity on a website

The court directed the State to develop and commission a centralised data software which would have details about all the provisions of the Act.