BENGALURU: Living organ donations are increasingly getting stuck in procedural hassles due to stringent rules, sometimes ending in rejections even though relatives are involved. However, authorities concerned contend that organ donation is not completely foolproof and rejections are sometimes inevitable.To ensure there is no exchange of money between the donor and the recipient in case of a living organ donation, the rulebook mandates certain documents and verification processes be conducted by the state organ transplant authorisation committees, including those set up at certain private hospitals.One of the mandatory conditions is that both the donor and the recipient produce their family trees. Last year, Benglaurean Tabu (name changed), 45, was denied permission to get her husband’s kidney. A private hospital’s organ transplant authorisation committee declined permission, faulting the couple’s family trees.Tabu had changed her religion after her marriage. A nurse at a city hospital, Tabu was shocked when a complete medical check up in 2015 showed her kidnyes were failing and doctors suggested she undergo a transplant.“My husband wanted to save me by donating one of his kidneys,” she said. Tabu began compiling documents for the transplant and went back to the places where she had been raised and sought for her family tree from a gram panchayat office in Bengaluru Rural district.“He is my husband and he wanted to save me. But the committee didn’t approve of it. In our case, even police verification was over,”she added.“I spent more than Rs 1.5 lakh for documentation as my name was different prior to the wedding. But the gram panchayat refused to give me a family tree, declining to take cognizance of the change in my name, which I had done following due legal procedures. My husband’s family tree too did not come as there was spelling mismatch in names. The authorisation committee promptly declined permission for transplant,” Tabu said.Tabu, mother of two sons, was, however, fortunate as she had also registered with the Tamil Nadu Organ Transplant Authority and got a kidney from a n accident victim in Salem in May 2017.Waiting for two-three months to get clearances from the state authorisation committee is routine in Karnataka . “In many cases, police verification takes more time . Once that is done, the committee sits once a week to verify applications. Donor’s statement is video-recorded to ensure there is no commerce involved in the transplant. Sometimes, in case of emergencies, the committee has conducted meetings soon after police verification,” said a doctor, who worked in the committee earlier.However stringent the rules may be, organ donation is not completely foolproof and hence rejections are sometimes inevitable, said Dr R Bhanumurthy, chairperson of state organ donation authorization committee.He cited a two-month-old case of a 46-year-old Nigerian kidney patient, who had allegedly paid huge sums of money to a 25-year-old unrelated donor. The youngster had said he was offering his kidney to the Nigerian out of love and affection.“When we examined the recipient’s bank account details it became clear that almost Rs 1 lakh had been transferred into his account. When we asked him for the source of this money, he drew a blank and could not answer our question satisfactorily. We declined permission for the donation and transplant,” Dr Bhanumurthy said.

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