India?s first transplant took place in 600 BC. Today, all that we need is more organ donors
Spain has 35, Britain 27 and the US 26; India has 0.08 donors per million. Yes, we have more millions, but even so, this is a dismal number. In an effort to raise this statistic, the Union health ministry has proposed that driver?s licences indicate people?s donor status. In an attempt to bridge the ever-growing gap between the demand and supply of organs for transplant, India is considering the adoption of the model followed by the US?driver?s licences have the word ?donor? marked prominently, should that be the holder?s preference. Twenty-four European countries, according to NYT, follow the ?presumed consent? model, implying that unless indicated otherwise, people are assumed to be donors; with caveats, of course. Even the Pope carried a donor card around for years, before being elected to the papacy ruled him out as a donor.
Other than making donors more visible, the Act also aims at expanding the definition of ?near relatives? to include grandparents and grandchildren. This combined with the amendment that will allow a donor-recipient pair who are near relatives but whose organs do not match to ?swap organs? with another pair, will vastly increase the legitimate ?market? for organ transplants. The illegal market for organs has also been addressed via stringent punishments for ?commercial? dealing in organs?their efficacy as deterrents is yet untested but important given the emergence of black market organ transplant rings such as the one for kidneys found out in 2008. Until printing body parts (two American companies have devised machines that work like inkjet printers but with a third dimension, using polymers and stem cells to ‘print organs’) becomes a reality, people will have to rely on the generosity of donors, making this initiative a step in the right direction.