Karnataka Plans Organ Transplant Centres in 22 Medical Colleges

The demand for organ transplants continues to far exceed the number of donations, and significant stigma around organ donation persists. A health department official noted that many families remain unwilling to donate the organs of their deceased relatives.

Rao agreed that grief counsellors were needed in government hospitals to promote organ donations ethically. "We have to make the existing centres work as well and talk to families of brain-dead patients about this (organ donation) as an option to help other people. It requires guidance to families about the many lives organ donation can save,” reports TOI.

He mentioned that Medical Education Minister Sharanprakash Rudrappa Patil believes there is a lack of infrastructure for the proper functioning of the system. According to him, with adequate support from the health department in terms of infrastructure and funding, effective implementation would be possible, and discussions on this are currently underway.

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Speaking to TOI, the minister said, a committee will also evaluate where these retrieval centres, in addition to transplant centres, are most needed in the state."Organ retrieval centres will be of great help when there are transplant centres nearby. And transplants do not take place in medical colleges but in super-speciality hospitals. We see this in Bengaluru. When we expand retrieval centres across the state, we need to look at also establishing transplant centres. We will evaluate it, and discussions are ongoing with the health department for both transplant and retrieval centres".