JOIN US'Organ donations rising slightly, but not enough'
While the number of organ donations has increased steadily in the state over the past three years, the ratio of donations to the demand is still low, said a state organisation that coordinates transplants.
From 2007 to 2012, the state could manage only 58 organ donations under the aegis of ‘Jeevasarthakathe’, a government nodal body that oversees the transplantation process in the state.
Since then, numbers have inched up, but barely.
In 2017, 69 organ donations were achieved, with 78 in 2018 — numbers that are shockingly low for a state where the death rate is 6.6 per 1,000 people, although Manjula K U, Chief Transplant Coordinator of Jeevasarthakathe, clarified that organs are primarily harvested only from patients who are medically declared as brain-dead, following the family’s consent.
A counselling coordinator at Jeevasarthakathe specified this rising numbers is some cause for cheer. “This year has been better than others as in the first nine months alone, we have had 74 organ donors,” he added.
The number includes the three donors in September. Deepak, a young city-based engineer, whose father, a former Indian Air Force sergeant, passed away on September 4 due to a brain stroke, explained that while his father was not a card-carrying organ donor, that the family nevertheless decided to donate his organs.
“There is such a dearth of donations, that we felt compelled to put my father’s organs up for donation because we felt a moral obligation towards society,” Deepak said.
According to Jeevasarthakathe staff, the three organ donors this month have had an impact on several lives, with their donations of heart valves, lungs, livers, kidneys and eyes benefiting 13 people.
The other donors are a mason, who suffered fatal head injuries after falling from a 10-foot height while at a worksite, and a farmer in Maddur, who was rendered brain-dead following a road accident when the motorcycle he was riding was hit by a car.