Organ donation gives a chance to live in many hearts and many prayers even when you are not there
India leads all 199 nations in the number of road accident deaths according to World Road Statistics, and the World Health Organization’s 2018 Global Report on Road Safety estimates that India accounts for 11 per cent of all accident-related deaths worldwide (more than 1.5 lakh deaths). Similar numbers (1,53,972) were recorded by the Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in 2021, with 67 per cent of the population being in the 18–45 age range.
Almost anybody can donate an organ, regardless of their current state of health. But a lot of individuals decide against registering as donors due to erroneous anxieties. Up to eight lives can be saved by an organ donor, but tragically, many people are unwilling to bestow this life-saving gift on their peers.
Importance of organ donation day
Dr Vikas Agarwal, Director & HOD-Robotic Urology, Kidney Transplant, Uro Oncology, Aakash Healthcare, New Delhi states that Every ten minutes, a new name is added to the national transplant waiting list, which currently has over 1,12,000 Indians waiting for transplants as of March 2020. The demand for kidneys is 2 lakh, compared to the supply of 6,000; for livers, there are only 1,500 available; and for hearts, there are 15 hearts available compared to the need of 50.
An organ is sadly unavailable for transplantation, resulting in the terrible death of twenty individuals each day in India, according to a 2020 study report. The research stated that the number of transplants (39,718) that were performed with 19,267 donors in 2019 is nearly three times the number of people on the waiting list for a transplant in 2020 (1,12,568).
As per Dr Reetesh Sharma, Director & Head – Nephrology & Kidney Transplant Medicine, Asian Hospital, Faridabad The Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation reports that in only a few years, India’s organ donation rate climbed from 0.05 per ten lakh people to 0.8 per ten lakh people. But when India’s organ donation rates are contrasted with those of Croatia (36.5), Spain (35.3), and the US (26 per ten lakh inhabitants), the picture becomes even more stark.
According to a 2021 worldwide assessment, India lags behind other countries in terms of organ donation (552 died brain deaths), despite the country’s staggering road accident fatality rate. Spiritual beliefs about life after death, a lack of knowledge about organ donation, and false information on illicit organ trade might all be contributing causes to India’s low organ donation rate.
Dr Rajendra Patankar, CEO, Jupiter Hospital, Pune says, this illustrates how raising awareness among Indian residents is essential to boosting the pool of potential donors and progressively lowering the number of people in need (waiting list).
The current imperative is to raise public awareness of the need of organ donation and pledge. Academic institutions should incorporate organ donation as a means of educating and increasing public knowledge of the practice at a young age. In addition, steps should be made to teach medical professionals and other staff members on how to manage cases of brain death and to upgrade the facilities of rural hospitals. There should be counselors in every hospital who can guide the patient’s family to provide permission for the donation of cadaveric organs.
The issue of organ transplant waiting lists will be resolved if all hospitals report and register cases of brain death. This will also aid in the development and implementation of the state-by-state centralised donor list.
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