Delhi has the most heart transplants across north India
New Delhi: Organ donation is a life-saving act. Yet, people in Delhi and many other states are unaware of its potential.
Though Delhi holds the distinction of performing the highest number of heart and liver transplants across north India, official numbers show that residents of the Capital need to participate more actively in this noble cause.
According to data from the National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO), since 1995, 190 patients in Delhi received hearts, 435 received livers, 42 received lungs and 2,480 received kidneys.
This year, across the country, donations of 2,188 corneas were received, while other organs included five pancreas, two lungs, 45 hearts, 33 livers and 160 kidneys.
An official from NOTTO said that even though the facility of transplantation has been available in select hospitals in the country since 1995, organ donation has been encouraged only after 2010.
"Through organ donations, we can give a new ray of hope to the sufferers. But Delhi-NCR rarely matches the southern states in terms of organ donation. In the past few years, the way green corridors have been created for transporting organs in Delhi-NCR, we presumed the trend is changing among the people. Twenty three per cent of body parts are coming from brain dead patients," official said.
Through intervention by NOTTO and several awareness campaigns, organ donation saw a growth as more people registered to donate their organs.
However, with these programs going down in magnitude, the number of donors registering is also decreasing, said the official.
Explaining the drop in donors, he said that in 2016 and 2017, 17 and 11 cadavers, respectively, were received for donation for hearts across Delhi-NCR. However, this year, only one cadaver was received for heart donation.
To promote organ donation, NOTTO is running several awareness programmes so that patients of kidney and liver failure may get life support. Many NGOs are also actively participating in such programmes.
In 2016, 114 patients received kidney, liver and heart transplants from 34 donors. The following year, 44 kidneys, 21 livers and ten hearts were transplanted.
At AIIMS alone, in 2017, as many as 14 patients from across the country received heart transplant.
The premier healthcare institute received 22 cadaver donors from across India, in 2017, from whom 75 people got organ transplantation.
The NOTTO official further stated that one donor even donated his skin.
Further, since 1995, more than 18,000 cases of living transplant have been recorded in the Capital. Of these, over 12,000 donors were related to the patients, while 6,000 donors were not related.
Moreover, 649 cadavers have been the donors during this 23-year period in Delhi.
Every year, about two lakh patients require kidney transplants, 60,000 patients need liver transplant and 50,000 need heart transplants. However, very few of these patients are fortunate enough to get the organs and end up losing their lives in the end.
