Pledge to Donate Organs to
Save Lives: Padma Shri Dr Saharia

9th
Mile, Baridua, Ro Bhoi, May 23, 2018: “About 4 lakh
new patients develop organ failure each year in India.
Out of these, 1.5 lakh suffer from Chronic Kidney
Disease and less than 5 per cent patients receive kidney
transplant. While 15 to 20 per cent kidney patients are
treated with dialysis, the remaining 75 per cent die
without treatment.” This has been revealed by the most
prolific kidney transplant surgeon in the country, Padma
Shri Dr Sarbeswar Sahariah, Vice Chairman, KIMS
Hospital, Hyderabad. Dr Sahariah was delivering a talk
on “Evolution of Organ Donation and Transplantation in
India” here yesterday organized by the University of
Science & Technology, Meghalaya.
Addressing hundreds of students and teachers, the
renowned surgeon said that Type 2 Diabetes and High
Blood Pressure are the two main problems that lead to
kidney failure. He said that while more than one lakh
patients need kidney transplant every year, only 5000
transplantations take place. According to Dr Sahariah,
organ transplantation has become the most accepted mode
of treatment for patients with terminal organ failure
throughout the world for a better quality of life and
increased longevity. However, awareness about organ
donation is very low even among the educated class, he
added.
Making an in depth power point presentation, Dr Saharia,
who hails from Mangaldai in Assam, said that the
potential cadaver donors are those having head injury
due to RTA, brain hemorrhage, ischemic brain injury and
inoperable brain tumor. He stated that the Government of
India has implemented the Transplantation of Human Organ
Act 1994 in order to streamline and regulate
transplantation activity in the country, to encourage
and regulate cadaver donor transplantation, to stop
commercial dealing in human organs and to accept brain
death also as definition of death.
According to statistics of Dr Saharia, who has conducted
3500 living transplantation and 200 cadaver
transplantation, most of the donors in India have been
women. In the living related transplantations, 76 per
cent donors have been mothers while 24 per cent were
fathers. Among siblings, 66 per cent were sisters while
34 per cent were brothers. Among spouse, 84 per cent
were wives, while 16 per cent happened to be husbands. |