Who can donate organs ?

                There are two types of donors, living and brain-dead. Living donors are normal healthy volunteers who can donate God- given organs that could be spared. Only kidney, liver and bone marrow could be donated by a living donor. Living donation has been taking place around the globe for last 60 years. All available studies show that with present evaluation methods for donation is safe and causes no morbidity or mortality due to donation. Advantage of living donation is that we can avoid wait time and do a planned surgery without uncertainties of an emergency surgery.  

Brain-dead donors are patients who had the misfortune of suffering from non treatable, irreversible brain damage due to accident or disease. Brain dead patients would not have any meaningful function of the brain and would not be able to breathe by self, but they would have a functioning heart which would be pumping blood to all organs. Their "life" would be supported on ventilator. A brain dead patient's heart would stop eventually within 2-3 days of becoming brain-dead and the patient would be pronounced clinically dead. It is this window of 2-3 days that gives an opportunity for the bereaved family to donate vital organs from a humanitarian standpoint. Once brain dead, there are only two reasons to maintain life on life support system like ventilator, first being to consider organ donation and secondly for buying time for the bereaved family to arrange for last rites of the patient. All transplantable organs can be procured for organ transplantation from a brain dead donor.

			FACTS  ABOUT BRAIN DEATH  Brain death is a clinical diagnosis and no advanced investigation is actually needed. Panel of minimum 4 doctors independently certify brain death. None of the doctors would be from the transplant team.  Brain death is accepted as legal form of death by Government  of India since 1994.(TRANSPLANTATION OF HUMAN ORGANS ACT (THO)  8th July 1994) Head injury due to different reasons commonly account for brain death. In India road traffic accident is the most common cause for brain death.  Brain-dead patient would be invariably in ICU and on ventilator for oxygenation
	DEFINITION OF BRAIN DEATH Irreversible and complete loss of - Consciousness - Capacity to breathe - Integrated neurological function BRAIN DEATH IS NOT COMA A person can recover from a coma, but brain death is death.

 

Brain- dead organ donation - the current status in India 

             Death following brain-death accounts for less than 5% of total deaths in a population. In India due to its phenomenal population, even this small fraction can provide as tremendous resource of organs for the needy patients. The organ donation rate in western world from brain- dead donor’s amounts to 30 donors per million population per year, where as in India it is only less than 0.5 donors per million population per year. It is believed that if we increase our organ donation rate to 5 donors per million population per year, we might be able to meet many organ transplantation requirements of even our neighboring countries.  

There are many reasons cited for poor brain-dead organ donation in India. Lack of public awareness, lack of government initiative, lack of infrastructure, religious restrictions and lack of trust in proper utilization of the donated organs are the most commonly cited reasons for poor brain dead organ donation in our country. 

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