Friday, February 4, 2011

Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Amendment Bill 2011,10-year jail for stealing organs

Incompatible Donors Will Be Allowed To Swap
New Delhi: It’s all set to get tough for India’s organ traders. According to Union health ministry’s new Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Amendment Bill 2011, which will come up in the next Cabinet meeting, punishment for illegal removal of human organ will entail a 10-year jail term and Rs 5 lakh fine.

Punishment for commercial dealings in human organs is being raised to sevenyear imprisonment with Rs 20 lakh fine. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is very keen to introduce the bill in the upcoming Budget session. The bill seeks to legalize swapping of vital organs between willing but incompatible donors.

At present, transplants can take place only between blood relatives (father, mother, son, daughter) and those emotionally close to the patient.

Swapping will help patients who have relatives willing to donate but are medically incompatible for the recipient. Under this system, when a donor’s organ isn’t compatible with his own relative but is suitable for another, two families can exchange the organs. It is also proposed that NGOs engaged in transplantation of organs in any manner will have to be registered with the appropriate authority.

The bill says hospitals should have a coordinator in the ICU-—who may be a doctor or a senior nursing staff member and independent of the transplant team. The coordinator will liaison between the treating physician and the potential brain-death donor and the organ retrieval bank. Brain death is still not completely accepted in India.

Brain dead patients are considered those who have suffered complete and irreversible loss of all brain function and are clinically and legally dead. Mechanical ventilation and medications keep their heart beating and blood flowing to their organs.

A whole body donation can help over 40 needy patients. Indians are not all that charitable when it comes to donating their organs. Spain has 35.1 organ donors per million people, Britain (27), USA (around 26) ,Canada (14) and Australia (11). While, India's count stands at only 0.08 donors per million population.

It is estimated that a patient requires an organ transplant in every three minutes. More than two lakh Indians require transplantation annually. However, not even 10% get it. Once a patient is declared brain dead, almost 37 different organs and tissues can be donated -- including the most important ones like heart, kidneys, liver, lungs and pancreas.



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