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The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare may amend the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA), 1994, to facilitate retrieval of cornea from all Indian patients who die in hospitals, without consent from the family.
This comes against the backdrop of a huge demand for cornea donation, with the country being able to meet only 50% of the requirement.
Going by the new initiative, corneas could be retrieved from all citizens who die in hospitals without the consent of the family. This means that every person dying in a hospital would be presumed to be a cornea donor.
However, those not willing to donate cornea should have registered their unwillingness to donate while alive, sources in the Tamil Nadu Health Department said.
A decision to implement the significant change in the national transplantation programme was taken after a high-level meeting convened by Director-General of Health Services Atul Goel on “Cornea donation/retrieval/distribution and other related issues” in Delhi recently. The DGHS suggested that self-declaration could be enough and presumed consent with opt-out system may be worked out for boosting cornea donation. To implement the new initiative, it was decided to direct medical colleges and hospitals in the country that all post graduate trainees, resident doctors, medical officers working in eye departments “must be given compulsory training in cornea/eye retrieval. Further, they will be involved in collection of corneas from the field”.
Training of technicians in cornea or eye retrieval would be instituted by the governments in States and Union Territories as per the guidelines prescribed under the Eye Bank Standards of India, 2020. The work would be done in coordination with the National Programme for Control og Blindness and the Directorate of Health Services. The need for an adequate number of eye donation counsellors was emphasised for promoting the cornea donation programme.
Experts were of the view that there was a need for omission of waiting for post-mortem examination before eye retrieval as it is accepted now that removing the cornea does not disfigure the face of the deceased or change post-mortem findings in any way. Delay in retrieval of corneas while waiting for post-mortem examination in deaths involving medico legal cases could lead to time lapse which would make eye retrieval impossible.
Anil Kumar, Director, National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation; Radhika Tandon, National Eye Bank, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi; Sarita Beri, Director of Ophthalmology, Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi; Namrata Sharma, Eye Bank Association of India, AIIMS, Delhi; Manisha Acharya, Director, Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital; and Jaswant B. Mehta, Managing Trustee, Eye Bank Coordination and Research Centre, were among those who took part in the discussion. to amend the Act, according to sources.
Published – October 22, 2024 11:24 pm IST
