The organ donation rate in India is one of the lowest in the world and thousands of patients die for want of an organ donor. Only a few are lucky enough to find donors in India.
According to statistics, around 2 lakh people require kidneys every year in India, but only a few thousands are lucky enough to find a donor.
Against the requirement of one lakh livers annually, only 1,000 people are able to get a transplant. And the rate of heart transplant is at the lowest with just 20-30 hearts available against the requirement of 5,000 hearts every year.
While in the West, around 70-80% of people pledge their organs, in India only about 0.01% do so. The Ministry of Health has estimated that the annual requirement for kidneys ranges between 1-2 lakh, with only 5,000 transplants occurring, making the gap between demand and supply huge.
Dr Ankur Garg, senior consultant, Liver Transplant at the B.L. Kapur Hospital, said that cadaver donation of organ is one of the safest and best practices that can be adopted in India.
“Cadaver donors are those patients who are brain dead and their organs can be used to save somebody else’s life. But people in India are mostly unaware of organ donations and sometimes the process is surrounded by myths and it becomes really difficult to convince people,” Dr. Garg said.