Organ transplant co-ordinators to give donation counselling

About one and a half lakh Indians are waiting for kidney donors. Those waiting for liver and pancreas are 60,000 and 30,000 in numbers, respectively. Intimidating though the numbers may be, the good news is that in the coming days organ transplant co-ordinators will be working actively in hospitals to promote organ donation.

A five-day intensive residential training programme for organ transplant co-ordinators, held recently in Bangalore by Zonal Co-Ordination Committee in Karnataka for Transplants (ZCCK) in partnership with MOHAN Foundation and Gift your Organ Foundation, sought to chalk out an agenda to promote the concept of organ donation.

About 60 participants from various parts of Karnataka, as well as Goa, Delhi, and Kolkata, attended the first such programme in Bangalore. Thirty of the participants were from Bangalore.

“The idea is to have at least one or two organ transplant co-ordinators in each hospital. The 60 co-ordinators who attended the camp in Bangalore are either doctors or paramedical staffers from different hospitals. They will now double up as organ transplant co-ordinators in their respective hospitals. They have the professional skills to identify potential organ donors and counsel their families,” said Patricia Viego, a transplant co-ordinator at ZCCK.

The training curriculum, however, was organised in such a way that even non-medical professionals such as social workers could be equipped to function as organ transplant co-ordinators.

The experienced faculty included eminent doctors from various hospitals in and around Bangalore. Viego said the doctors shared their experiences with the participants during various sessions.
This is the first time that ZCCK had organised formal training for organ transplant co-ordinators.

“As per the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, transplant co-ordinators should be present in all hospitals. As of now, a few hospitals have transplant co-ordinators but not many of them are professionally trained for the job. With extensive training programmes like this, we would get better coordinators,” said Sameer Dua, founder and chief catalyst, Gift Your Organ Foundation, an NGO that partnered with ZCCK to conduct the training programme.

Gift Your Organ Foundation plans to conduct similar programmes in coordination with ZCCK once every three months to generate awareness about organ transplantation.

“To begin with, we would like to conduct similar programmes in others parts of Karnataka and later in various parts of the country,” Dua told DNA.

The topics covered in the programme ranged from the role of NGOs and government organisations to the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994, with the latest amendments. Specific focus was laid on the definition of brain death and the deceased donor programme. Each of the participants was issued a certificate signed by more than 30 different experts from the faculty.