Begin work on organ transplant institute building immediately, High Court directs Karnataka govt

The High Court on Tuesday directed the state government to immediately start the construction of the proposed Institute of Gastroenterology Sciences and Organ Transplant and complete it in a time-bound manner.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi and Justice Suraj Govindaraj, passed this direction while disposing of a PIL filed challenging the use of land inside the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases for the construction of the institute.

The PIL was filed in 2017 by Dr R Chandrashekara, former VC of RGUHS and Dr B Rudrappa, a retired government servant.

The petitioners contended that the construction of another hospital on the premises of the chest hospital would adversely affect the TB patients. The TB patients will not get fresh air since the open air is taken away for the construction of another hospital, the petitioners claimed.

The state government submitted that there is an urgent requirement for a Gastroenterology and Organ Transplant Institute in the state. There are nearly 82,000 liver patients and about 17,000 kidney patients waiting for transplants in the state. The government further submitted that there is a dearth of organ donors and last year, 60 transplants took place.

It was informed to the court that the government had decided to construct a dedicated institute on the chest institute campus keeping in mind the non-availability of space in other super speciality hospitals. The institute, initially proposed with a 200-bed hospital, has now been expanded to a 500-bed hospital and would drastically reduce the cost of liver transplantation to below Rs 1lakh.

“There is nothing on record to indicate what are the minimum requirements of a TB hospital. There is also nothing on record to indicate that in case new hospitals are constructed they will adversely affect the TB patients in the existing hospital. We are of the considered view that it is for the authorities concerned to take the considered opinion of the experts in the field and accordingly decide the place and location of the hospitals which they propose to construct. It is also for the State Government to assist suitability and requirement of such hospitals,” the court said.

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