Mumbai: In a bid to promote deceased organ donation, the centre has asked states to train first responders such as the police, ambulance drivers, and paramedics, among others, to identify potential donors among road traffic accident victims.The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organization (NOTTO), which issued the notification last week, said such steps would help address the critical shortage of organs for transplantation. The organ donation rate remains below one deceased donor per one million population.Organs such as kidneys and liver can be donated by living donors, mainly relatives. However, only a brain-dead donor can donate organs such as the heart, lungs, pancreas, intestines, and valves, among others. There is limited awareness about the identification of brain death, the certification process, and their maintenance.Incidentally, a percentage of road traffic accident victims suffer brain death, but they don’t translate into donations because of delays in identifying and transporting such patients to the right transplant-certified hospitals.“As per the ministry of road transport and highways, India recorded 1.7 lakh deaths due to road accidents in 2023; many could have been potential organ donors. These potential organ donors were lost due to lack of timely identification and referral,” said the NOTTO note. NOTTO director Dr Anil Kumar told TOI that states have been asked to upgrade trauma centres with the necessary infrastructure and manpower for the retrieval of organs. “States are also required to put in place mechanisms for the flow of information from the first responders to the transplant coordinators available in the nearest trauma centres or hospitals or medical colleges,” he added.India comes third, behind the US and China, in the number of deceased donations per year. However, given India’s population and the increasing burden of organ failure, there is a need to improve the organ donation rate.Mumbai, which was the first city to carry out a deceased kidney transplant in 1997, has improved its deceased donations in post-Covid years. About 60 deceased donations were registered in 2024. The number of donors this year so far is 44.
