Mumbai: ‘Cops must help panel that oversees organ transplants’

To make the organ transplant procedure more transparent and curb organ trafficking, the City Human Organ Authority Committee has sought support from the police department. The panel has written a letter to local police officers in this regard.

After a kidney racket was exposed in Pune in March, the state government set up three regional authority panels to expedite the transplant process involving live donors and recipients. Cama and Albless Hospital, which comes under the JJ Group of hospitals, was selected for Mumbai city while KEM hospital was selected for Palghar.

A seven-member committee was constituted under the chairmanship of the superintendents of these hospitals. The committee, headed by Cama hospital superintendent Dr Tushar Palve, includes two members from the Indian Medical Association and two members from the Directorate of Health Services, besides pharmacologists and microbiologists.

Also Read: Mumbai: Family of 36-year-old road accident victim donates his organs in Kalyan

As per the procedure, the donor and recipient have to go through the committee which will scrutinise every document and make sure that everything is above the water and there is no organ trafficking involved. However, it becomes difficult for doctors to verify blood relations.

Dr Palve said, “It is a challenging task for doctors to identify and cross-check the relationship between donors and recipients. Therefore, it has become important to include the police in this committee. The police will play an important role in verifying the relationships between donor and recipient and getting the documents certified and they will also see to it that there is no scope for organ trafficking. So I have written a letter to the local police authority (Azad Maidan police station) to include them in this committee. We are expecting a positive response from the police.”

The Human Organ Authorization Committee has handled 40 cases from Mumbai city related to organ donation in seven months. These include 14 liver and 26 kidney donation cases.