City sees 30.86% hike in organ donations, nears last year’s total

Mumbai saw a 30.86% increase in organ donations in 2023 compared to the previous year, with 106 organs donated by 35 donors between January and September. The city is gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels of organ donation, with plans to increase collaboration between intensivists and neurologists to detect brain-dead patients. Efforts are also being made to include organ donation in medical college curriculums and address hurdles faced by hospitals without cadaver organ donations.

Mumbai: With the relatives of a 66-year-old brain-dead patient at Fortis Hospital, Mulund donated his kidney, liver, and cornea on October 23, the city inches closer to its last year’s total number of cadaver donations.

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Mumbai saw a hike of 30.86% in the number of organs donated in 2023 compared to last year. According to data released by the Zonal Transplant Coordination Committee (ZTCC), Mumbai saw 106 organ donations — which include kidneys, liver, heart, lung, and pancreas — between January 1 to September 30, 2023, by 35 donors. In 2023, during the same period, 81 organs were donated by 31 donors.

Dr Bharat Shah, general secretary, ZTCC, said the city is gradually returning to pre-pandemic numbers of organ donation. “Before the pandemic, the city saw 76 organ donors in 2019. The number drastically collapsed to 30 in 2020. This year, we had 38 organ donors,” he said

After the dip in cadaver donations during the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2022, the city saw 47 cadaver organ donations. In 2021, the city saw 31 cadaver organ donations.

ZTCC has been actively working with intensivits and neurologists in city hospitals to increase cadaver donations. “We had made subcommittees of intensivists in the city who meet once a month to review the cadaver organ donations. We are planning to start a similar subcommittee of neurologists soon,” Shah said.

Dr Shah said while intensivists are the first-line healthcare professionals who can detect brain-dead patients in the ICU, neurologists equally play the role of detecting brain-dead patients in the hospital. “A collaborative effort can lead to a rise in cadaver organ donations in the city. We are also planning CMEs in medical colleges and speaking to the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS) to include organ donation in curriculums,” Shah added.

To further increase the cadaver donations in the city, Dr Shah said they are holding regular meetings with hospitals having organ transplant programs.

“In the meeting, we try to understand the hurdles these hospitals are facing, especially the hospitals who are not having cadaver organ donations,” he said. ZTCC is also asking the counsellors to sensitise relatives on bone, skin, and other tissue donations too.