A twenty-year-old college going girl, Amita Aggarwal (name changed), had been suffering from the end-stage renal disease, and was in desperate need of a kidney transplant. Her parents had been trying hard without fail to get her the required organ but all in vain. Sadly, her parents could not find a suitable donor with a healthy kidney for her in Delhi due to which she died last month.
Experts, in accordance to this incident said that this was not the only case where a patient died due to fail in receiving an organ. Hundreds of people in need of organ transplants lose their life and cannot be saved every year because of lack of donors.
“The donor scene in India is still very ‘dismal’ despite amendments to a law which the government passed in 2008. The amendments to the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (Thoa), 1994, were passed following the unearthing of a thriving kidney donation racket in northern India”, said M. C. Misra, chief of the Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Centre at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
Also, Sanjiv Gulati, director of nephrology at Fortis Hospital in Vasant Kunj, told IANS: ‘There has been almost no improvement in the organ donation situation. Things have not changed at all. People are not ready to part with organs of their loved ones even after death.’
While most donors in India are women, many don’t come forward to pledge organ donation because of religious or superstitious reasons, the expert said.
Thousands of people in India fail to receive donated organs which results in death eventually. Facts say that this is due to the lack of donors to which the experts agree.
“We need to rope in religious leaders to make people aware of the need for organ donation. People have weird thinking like whichever organ you donate, in the next life you will be born without that,” Misra told IANS.
This problem still persists in India where a major percentage of death tolls are due to lack of donations.
Families that are unable to provide the required organ(s) have no other option than to turn to donation, which lacks here
