Kolkata: Organ donation, as the name suggests, is a noble humble cause.
Unfortunately, the awareness about organ donation in the eastern part is slightly lacking compared to the rest of India. Considering the statistics of the last five years, Eastern India is doing fairly well to create awareness programs & sensitise the population regarding the benefits of organ donation.
CMRI joins hands in this endeavour to sensitise the audience by creating a gateway for everyone to come ahead and pledge to donate their prized organs.
A large population in our country is suffering from chronic diseases or end-stage diseases and if we go into statistics, approximately five people out of five lakh people i.e. 10% of people suffer from end-stage chronic disease. There’s a huge scarcity of organs for people to just survive. Catering to such a situation, the only way we can come forward is by creating awareness.
According to reports, at least more than 5 lakhs Indians are dying every year due to a lack of organs for transplantation. Organ transplantation could play a pivotal role in their precious lives by giving them hope to live a good quality productive healthy life beyond expectations. One organ donor can save more than eight lives in his life by donating well-functioning organs. The organs which can be successfully transplanted are kidneys, liver, bone marrow, heart, lungs, cornea, pancreas, and skin through surgical & medical treatments.
Dr. Pradeep Chakrabarti, Renal surgeon, CMRI said, “In my vast experience of transplant surgeries, I have seen how a single person can change & benefit multiple lives with the simple act of organ donation. For a long time, I have worked in the United States and the UK, and I have seen how progressively they have been able to modernize & streamline the whole process of organ donation. We need to implement it in India as well where organ transplantation is the need of the hour. We need to streamline the whole process with mutual co-operation among government, private healthcare sector, and community.”
“We must be aware of how we can be beneficial even after our death and how our organs, which are generally unutilized after death, can be of immense help and give a new life to certain people who are just basically striving for it. Children born with end-stage renal disease, and heart diseases just die because of a lack of organs so donating an organ can help save a life. However, in the case of cadaver donation, one has to register themselves in NOTTO, a national organization, and ROTTO in West Bengal, to become an eligible donor. The algorithm of organ transplant depends on who applies first. Apart from that, the availability of the organ, timing, blood group, current health status, and demography also play an important role in determining the allocation of organs. So, there are a lot of factors that collectively determine organ allocation in our country,” Chakrabarti said.
Dr. Abhinandan Banerjee, Nephrologist and Transplant Physician, CMRI, explains, “In case of renal transplant, anybody who is suffering from end-stage renal disease always fits into the category of undergoing a kidney transplant. In terms of a Kidney transplant, we have two options – Living Donor Transplants & Deceased Donor Transplants. So now with the recent advancement, we have the expertise to go ahead with a blood group mismatch Transplant or ABO-incompatible Transplant. Even if your blood group does not match, there is a particular way that we can desensitize the patient by plasmapheresis and go forward with the renal transplant. So, the results are comparable in both cases. Now we can say that we have many ways to increase the lifespan & provide a guideline treatment to patients of end-organ chronic disease.”
Dr. Rajeev Sinha, Paediatric Nephrologist & Transplant Physician explains, “Dealing with the most sensitive category of the society – end-stage organ disease in paediatric age-group. It’s mostly a genetic disease causing kidney failure which not only affects the child physically & the parents mentally & financially. So, organ transplantation is the only gold standard treatment for the entire category of patients. In CMRI we have the expertise with paediatric Intensivist, the Paediatric transplant surgeon to cater to all the patients. It’s my humble request to the entire society to pledge for organ donation to save & help to build the future of the world.”
