Organ Donation

Why in News?

• Recently, organ donation numbers increased back in 2021. Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 provides various regulations for the removal of human organs and its storage. It also regulates the transplantation of human organs for therapeutic purposes and for the prevention of commercial dealings in human organs.

Highlights

• India has an organ donation rate of about 0.52 per million population. In comparison, the organ donation rate in Spain, the highest in the world, is 49.6 per million population.
• Unlike India where a person has to register to be an organ donor — and the family has to consent to it after death — Spain has an opt-out system where a person is presumed to be a donor unless otherwise specified.
• Although organ donation has increased, however, the number of deceased donations has remained lower than the number of donations from living persons.
• Deceased Donation is the organs donated by the kin of those who suffered brain death or cardiac death.
• Only 14.07% of the total organs harvested in 2021 were from deceased donors, much less than the 16.77% of 2019.
• Of the 12,387 organs harvested in 2021, only 1,743 — a little more than 14% — were from deceased donors. The numbers harvested in 2021 were close to the highest in the last five years (12,746, in 2019).
• There is also a geographical skew in deceased donations. All but two deceased organ donations in 2021 were in 15 states, with the top five — Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka — accounting for more than 85% of the total. Two organs were harvested from a deceased donor in Goa.
• One reason for the geographical skew could be that most organ transplant and harvesting centres are concentrated in these geographies.
• The first reason Is the gap in the number of organs needed and the number of transplants that happen in the country.
• In absolute numbers, India conducts the third highest number of transplants in the world.
• Yet, of the estimated 1.5-2 lakh persons who need a kidney transplant every year, only around 8,000 get one.
• Of the 80,000 persons who require a liver transplant, only 1,800 get one. And of the 10,000 who need a heart transplant, only 200 get it.