Gujarat drafts strict rules for organ transplant

AHMEDABAD: On Friday night when an accident victim's heart in Surat was flown off 269 km to Mumbai's Fortis hospital in Mulund for transplant, Gujarat authorities were not clear whether a no-objection certificate was required for transporting the organ outside the state. The National Directorate of Health Services had to intervene to facilitate the transfer.

What Gujarat authorities did not reveal was that the state has already drafted its guidelines for organ harvesting and transplantation, which has proposed stringent protocols for organ donors, retrieving hospitals and recipients. The draft guideline of Gujarat: Deceased donor organ and tissue transplantation (G-DOT) has proposed that all private or government hospitals ha ve to be registered as designated Organ and Tissue Transplant Hospital (OTTH).

"The State Organ and Tissue Transplantation Organization (SOTTO) is supposed to be governing authority that takes decisions on organ transplant and harvesting issues," says a senior health official. The draft guidelines is with the state government for approval.

"Had the law been in force, the organ transplant would not have been so smooth where it involves inter-state transfer as the SOTTO will give preference for local patients," adds the senior health official. The new guidelines also propose to fine hospitals heavily — Rs 10,000 to Rs 10 lakh — for refusing to comply with the procedures for declaring a patient brain dead.

It may also lead to cancel lation of the hospital's license, the law proposes. SOTTO may ask its team to procure organs from other hospitals whenever the need arises and in such case the government will bear all expenses of organ retrieval.

Beside this, SOTTO will also put in place a centralized software that will monitor in real time the medical condition of organ recipients registered or undergoing treatment across private and government OTTH.

"For instance, in the case of a kidney transplant, the software will report in real time biochemical or blood reports of recipients in need of the kidney. This includes reports on metabolites like urea, creatinine, guanidine and related compounds. On the basis of these reports, SOTTO will decide the priority of which patient should receive the organ first," says a senior state health official.