Government issues draft guidelines for kidney donation

NEW DELHI: The government issued draft guidelines for allocating criteria for kidney donation from deceased source, a move aimed at easing rules and procedures to encourage organ donation in the country.

Union Health Minister J P Nadda said the initiative reflects the government's commitment to promote organ donation, and once it is finalised, these guidelines will go a long way in encouraging organ donation in the country.

"The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) under the Union Health Ministry has issued draft guidelines for allocating criteria for deceased donor kidney transplant.

"The draft guidelines have been posted on the NOTTO website and comments and suggestions have been invited to fine tune the guidelines," an official statement said, adding, suggestions can be sent to the NOTTO till January 16.

The draft guidelines include various issues including recipient registration, listing and scoring system in the waiting list, allocation principles and algorithm, including criteria for urgent listing and inter-state issues.

"This initiative reflects our commitment to promote organ donation in the country. We will finalise these guidelines after we receive various suggestions and comments on these draft guidelines.

"Once finalised, these guidelines will go a long way in promoting organ donation in the country," Nadda said.

A list of the government and non-government hospitals in Delhi along with those in the neighboring area of the NCR (Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida) have also been listed in the draft guidelines.

The hospitals in the NCR cities will be included in the networking along with hospitals of Delhi for organ sharing and allocation.

The statement said that an agreement with the respective state governments and institutions in due course of time, would also be signed.

Organ transplant has two sources - living donor and deceased donor, and in the case of a living donor source, a donor is already decided for a specific recipient.

However for a deceased donor source, recipient needs to be selected out of large recipients pool. The allocation of organ is a complex process, influenced by a number of factors including medical urgency and donor recipient matching, the preamble of the draft said.