Saving Lives: Telangana tops country in deceased organ donation, transplantation

Hyderabad: For Telangana, apart from being a day for spreading awareness on an important issue, this year’s National Organ Donation Day on August 13 has a special mention for Telangana.

This week, health minister T Harish Rao said that the Government of India has acknowledged Telangana as the ‘State with the highest number of Deceased Donors.’ For this life-saving feat, the state will be awarded by National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO). The state said that the achievement is due to its flagship programme, Jeevandan Cadaver Transplantation Programme (JCTP). The state leads in deceased organ donations and transplantations too.

“As a run-up to the National Organ Donation Day, a 13th donor felicitation programme was organised in the city on Thursday. As many as 105 families of donors from January 2022 and July 2022, under the Jeevandan programme, were felicitated. Since the inception of the programme in 2013, donor’s felicitation programmes were organised every year,” said Dr G Swarnalatha, professor and head of the Department of Nephrology and in-charge of Jeevandan at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS).

Tamil Nadu and Karnataka among top five

With 194 donations in 2022, Telangana is leading the top five states in deceased organ donations. The other states to rank among the top five are Tamil Nadu (156 donations), Karnataka (151 donations), Gujarat (148 donations) and Maharashtra (105) donations – a total of 754 organ donations from the top five states. As for transplantation, Telangana tops at 530 followed closely by Tamil Nadu (519 transplants), Karnataka (415), Gujarat (399) and Maharashtra (289); a total of 1,675 transplants from these five states.

Out of a total of 5,352 organ donations in India in the last 10 years (2013-2022), 1,162 are from Telangana state (around 21.7%) while out of a total of 17,633 transplants, there have been 3,188 transplants (18%) from Telangana in the last one decade.

The Jeevandan programme in Telangana was started in 2012, in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh. The chairman of CTAC is the special chief secretary, of Health Medical and Family Welfare; the chairman of Appropriate Authority for Cadaver Transplantation (AACT) is the DME, Government of Telangana; and the co-chairman is the NIMS director.

The Jeevandan nodal centre for Telangana is at NIMS.

4,829 organs & tissues retrieved in 10 years

The state government of Telangana has approved the free transplantation of kidneys, liver, heart and lungs with post-operative drugs under the Aarogyasri Scheme.

Since the establishment of the Jeevandan programme in January 2013 till date, a total of 4,829 organs and tissues have been retrieved from 1,288 cadaveric donors, and 480 organ transplantations have been done in government hospitals including NIMS, Osmania General Hospital, and Gandhi Hospital free of cost under Aarogyasri Scheme. As of Thursday, 37 hospitals in Telangana have been permitted by an appropriate authority to carry out cadaver transplantation, including three government hospitals.

Innovative initiatives to boost organ donation

Dr Swarnalatha also shared about the initiatives taken to encourage organ donation under Jeevandan.

“In order to increase the donation pool, Jeevandan has started a transplant coordinator training programme to train the ICU staff nurses and other paramedics as a transplant coordinator and has so far trained more than 250 students. Jeevandan is also conducting CME programmes regularly on brain death declaration and donor optimisation,” said Dr Swarnalatha.

“To create more transparency in organ allocation, National Informatics Centre (NIC) Telangana created an award-winning website for Jeevandan. In 2017, Jeevandan was awarded by Notto as one of the best states for organ donation in the country. Jeevandan has also started an innovative programme of conducting donor condolences by attending the ritual ceremony on the 11th day at the donor’s hometown,” Dr Swarnalatha added.

She said that Jeevandan has been conducting awareness programmes in various institutes, NGOs, hospitals, government offices and different sectors. The latest donation rate of Telangana for 2022 is 5.48 per million population (pmp) while India’s average organ donation rate for 2022 is 0.8 pmp.