Text alert scheme will ensure families in India get the message on organ donation

The Guardian
Roli Srivastava

India hopes to reduce transplant waiting times and deal a blow to the illegal organ trade by encouraging 300,000 doctors to ask families about organ donation. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Awareness campaign aims to stop trafficking and black market trade in body parts by reminding doctors to ask bereaved families about organ donation

Doctors in India are to get text alerts reminding them to ask families to donate the organs of deceased loved ones as part of a campaign to solve the country’s organ shortage, which has fuelled a black market trade.

The drive, “Poochna mat bhoolo” – “Don’t forget to ask” in Hindi – will target 300,000 doctors. It represents the latest in a string of awareness campaigns in India after a kidney racket involving a poor woman was uncovered at a top Mumbai hospital last year.

According to government data, up to 200,000 people are on the waiting list for kidneys in India while 25-30,000 are currently awaiting a liver. Legal donations meet about 3% to 5% of the demand.

“Families don’t remember to donate organs when a loved one dies, or it’s too late by the time they do. So we are reminding doctors to speak to them immediately after a death,” said Krishan Kumar Aggarwal, president of the Indian Medical Association, which launched the drive. “Human trafficking for organs will stop if cadaver organ donations pick up.”

Commercial trade in organs is illegal in India. Donations to a patient by a close relative are allowed but fewoccur. In desperation, some patients on the waiting list seek the services of middlemen to procure organs for money.

The middlemen scout villages for potential donors, whom they sometimes lure with money and false promises of a job.

“Organ failures are commonly caused by lifestyle diseases and most often affect the rich, which leads to the possibility of exploitation of the poor,” said Anil Kumar, who heads India’s organ transplant programme.

Kumar’s department has been alerted to various forms of organ trade – from advertisements on websites offering money to donors, to kidnappings for organs, as well as people from Nepal trying to sell organs in India to rebuild their homes after the earthquake.

Campaigners say the organ supply-demand gap can be bridged if doctors, particularly those working in the intensive care units of major hospitals, are sensitised to counsel families to donate organs.

They say the “Poochna mat bhoolo” campaign is critical as it means that doctors speak directly to families, eliminating middlemen. As well as texts to doctors, posters will be put up in hospitals to remind doctors to ask the donation question.