Mayur Doshi, 36, a businessman flew to Singapore last month after he suffered from kidney failure in December 2010. He and his family didn’t want to go through the tedious, lengthy procedures for kidney transplant in the country and were ready to spend money.
Like Doshi, Singapore is becoming one of the most sorted out destination for kidney transplant. According to the nephrologists in the city, it is the stringent law of kidney transplant that is forcing the people to fly to Singapore.
“Kidney transplant laws are not that stringent there. Here only family members can donate a kidney but have to undergo various procedures for it,” said Dr Bharat Shah, consulting nephrologist, Lilavati hospital.
After repeated requests from the doctors, the government recently made few relaxations in the law. “Grandparents were added in the list of family members who can donate their kidneys.
But this doesn’t help the already overburdened line of people waiting for kidney transplants. I had a case recently where the mother was ready to donate kidney to the son but they had to wait for over a month before the authorities gave permission for transplant.
According to the rule, the mother has to have consent of her relatives. Her husband’s consent doesn’t work. Hence many people from affluent families are heading towards places like Singapore,” said Dr Shah.
Dr Alan Almeida, consulting nephrologist, PD Hinduja hospital said, “Many people who can afford it, are definitely going to places like Singapore when it comes to unrelated kidney transplantation.
Even politician Amar Singh went to Singapore for the same. To stop this either the government has to relax the unrelated donor norm or cadaver donation should be encouraged in the country.”
The process had hit a road block in April-May this year after new guidelines were recently laid down by the government on organ transplantations.
According to the amendment, the authorisation committee which is present in every hospital, (the committee reviews and approves kidney transplants) should have members from civil society as well as doctors and each of these members should have the state’s approval.
The new committee needs to have a DMER person (state government representative), a retired judge, prominent person from the society (can be retired IAS office of class I or class II officer), people from the hospital administration (including clinical people).
But the lack of proper co-ordination between the hospitals and authorities, the hospitals don’t get authorisation letters on time and have had to delay operations for last two months.
