Odisha has taken steps to popularise organ transplantation activities and progressed a lot since 2000. While there are eight centres with transplant and retrieval of organs across the State, it has so far done 1,312 organ transplant surgeries, including 10 deceased transplants so far.
While speaking at a seminar on “Organ donation and transplant” at the Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, State Additional Director of Medical Education and Training (DMET) Dr Umakant Satpathy, who is also the nodal officer of State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO), observed that awareness must also be spread among people that monetary support is available for the organ transplant operations like kidney and liver under the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana.
At the hospital level, he also proposed brain stem death (BSD) awareness, coordination for organ harvesting and transplant teams constantly in touch with SOTTO and, above all, a mega IEC campaign across the State and local basis to raise the public awareness on organ donation as a single BSD-certified person can save at least eight lives by donating his/her organs.
Dr YK Chawla, Chairman Academics, KIMS, said India has 618 transplant centres and 104 non-transplant retrieval centres.
Dr Sujata Dash, Head, Network of Eye Banks LV Prasad Eye Institute spoke on the corneal infections and eye bank as India is having 7 million blindness cases due to corneal issues. However, 55% of global corneal harvest is coming from the US and India. She called for efforts to popularise the Hospital Corneal Retrieval Programme (HCRP) as the voluntary corneal collection in Odisha is very less.