Oishani Mojumder By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Since its inception in 2013, the Jeevandan Cadaver Transplant programme of the State government, that reached its highest number of donors of 160 in 2018, has reached a stagnation point this year. Citing a major obstacle, Dr Swarnalatha said, “Even though the numbers in 2018 are very motivating, however, it is feared that we may have reached a saturation point. It is evident as in the first half of 2019, only 73 organ donors have come forward. Dr Swarnalatha, chief of the Jeevandan scheme at Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) acknowledging the rise in the number of organ donors, cautioned that policy should be formulated to focus on organ donations at the district and periphery hospitals, to prevent the numbers from falling. Therefore, the Jeevandan policy will be taking a different course for the future endeavours. “We will focus on ICUs of district hospitals by running awareness campaigns and explaining to them the importance of declaring a patient brain dead at the correct time so that the organs can be harvested immediately. Most of these hospitals seem to primarily hesitate to declare brain death,” she said. Even though the donation rate of the Jeevandan policy has increased from 3.01 per cent in 2013 to 4.01 per cent in 2019, the future course of the initiative will include a revamp. Explaining their plans, she said, “Apart from mandatory declaration of brain death, we are looking at OPT consent, expanding the pool of donors and machine preservation of organs.” Dr Swarnalatha added that the trend of organ donors mostly being women in live organ donations is reversed in the circumstance of cadaver donations.

Stay updated with all the Hyderabad Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.