A DIRE DONOR SHORTAGE

India is a world leader in organ transplant technology, numbers of transplants and success rates. Yet, as demand grows exponentially, donation rates remain low and thousands await an organ for a second chance at life

- BY SONALI ACHARJEE

In death, Janmesh Lenka saved two lives. On March 1, when the 15-year-old was declared brain-dead at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar, his parents made the courageous—and compassionate—decision to allow his organs to be used for transplants. Lenka's liver was retrieved and transported to the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) in Delhi, where it was given to a child with end-stage liver failure, while his kidneys were transplanted into an adolescent at AIIMS Bhubaneswar itself. “These procedures were impossible to do a decade ago...there is no denying the advancements made in transplant technology,” says Dr Sanjeev Lalwani, professor of forensic medicine at the JPN Apex Trauma Centre in AIIMS Delhi. An equally complex procedure was performed on a 10-month-old boy from Karur in Tamil Nadu, at the G Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital in Coimbatore, where bone marrow from a brain-dead donor was transplanted to treat his deficiency of MALT1, a protein crucial to the immune system. A few years back, the medical diagnosis would have meant a death sentence.

The Organ Retrieval Banking Organisation at AIIMS Delhi, which maintains a register of brain-dead donors and promotes awareness on organ donations, has witnessed a remarkable rise in donor requests in recent years. “India performed the third highest number of organ transplants in 2023, next only to the US and China,” says Dr (Col.) Avnish Seth VSM, head of Manipal Organ Sharing & Transplant (MOST). Not just numbers, success rates are impressive too. One-year survival rates—the usual benchmark—are around 85-90 per cent for liver and kidney transplants, 85-90 per cent for lung transplants, 85-90 per cent for heart, and over 95 per cent for pancreas transplants.